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MIT App Inventor Back Online

Posted by Soulskill on from the getting-the-band-back-together dept.

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."

4 of 55 comments (clear)

  1. Why Google cancels all their projects by ProgrammerJulia · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    99% percent of Google's revenue is derived from its advertising programs. Their main products are fully closed source and proprietary. They provide software as a service and cloud hosting, and that is what they're always going to do. It's what most slashdotters hate, but not when it's about Google.

    Is it because they offer something for "free"? Their contributions to open source are minimal at best. In fact, their contributions towards open source hurt open source and web standards. Google is by far the only company still fighting against H.264 (the better product) because they have a competing product they would like to see more use for. They are so desperate to get into the social network spying game that they actually made it required to make Google+ profile when you're creating new Google account.

    Put it other way, they will continue closing services that didn't turn into immediate profit. They will continue to buy out firms just to close them down the line. Sometimes they buy them because the idea might be good or for some business reason (like Google Earth, Android and YouTube), but many times they also buy out competitors because they would be a good competitor to Google and they don't want that to happen.

    Remember that Google's "low, shitty guidelines and standards" advertising side arm is called DoubleClick, which certainly has a "funny" history.

    1. Re:Why Google cancels all their projects by fredprado · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      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.

    2. Re:Why Google cancels all their projects by ProgrammerJulia · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      Google funds Firefox (and other browsers, none the less) because it brings them revenue. Note that these are always revenue share contracts with Google and browser makers. Google cares about getting users because users bring them money. 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.

    3. Re:Why Google cancels all their projects by VortexCortex · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      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.