Slashdot Mirror
MIT App Inventor Back Online
mikejuk writes "If you have been missing App Inventor, you'll be relieved to learn that it is now available again — albeit still in beta. After two months, MIT has managed to open the beta program and users can once again create App Inventor Android programs. However, you still need a Google ID to sign in, and among the known issues is the problem that MIT App Inventor cannot load projects that are as large as those supported by the Google version. It also reports that some projects have loaded with missing blocks. While the world seems to be intent on making a fuss about the educational impact of cheap hardware like Raspberry Pi, really valuable tools that could produce a new generation of programmers such as App Inventor don't seem to get the headlines or the concern due when they go missing for months."
Everything in the universe is relative. There is no virtuous big company in this world, but compared to the others, despite all its wrongdoings, Google is still the least harmful of all. That and the fact it more often than not makes the lives of the other, more hateful companies, harder, is why Google is so loved.
On top of paying revenue share to competing browsers, they are also paying shareware authors and OEM's to bundle Chrome with their apps and PC's. A quite adwarey and shady tactic.
On top of making Bing their default search engine with IE, Microsoft is also bundling their browser with the OS and making it a mandatory not-removable component. Quite a shady tactic.