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Though the doors have been shuttered on Google Labs, one project near and dear to Android lovers lives on. Google open-sourced the code to App Inventor, a software tool that allows even those without much coding experience to create Android applications and games, and the brainiacs at MIT ran with it, releasing the first beta of MIT App Inventor.
MIT’s version picks up where Google left off, and unlike the initial closed release the program saw when it first hit the scene the new edition is open to all with a Google account. This of course means MIT’s servers have been hit pretty hard this morning with download requests, making access to the beta a bit difficult. It’s a shame that App Inventor lost official Google support, but it’s now in more than capable hands. Let’s see what apps you guys can come up with.
[MIT via SuperTechBlog]
MIT created Scratch, which this is based on. So many educators will be happy with this news.
This is why whenever Google lays something to rest it never bothers me all too much. Many of their (Google) projects that are worth anything, although maybe not to Google at the time, are usually worth something to others. This is a perfect example of Google improving the landscape and another reason why Open Sourced material is worth it’s weight in gold!
Hard to imagine what the tech landscape would have looked like if Google had went the “walled garden” route. Mobile world would have turned out completely different.
This ROCKS!!!
I am so happy that this was picked up and kept alive…
IHTFP