Getting Started with App Inventor

Six days ago I began my journey into Android applications.  Upon getting  my first Android based phone I quickly decided that I need some applications that were not currently available or well suited to my needs.

A short search online and I found what I thought could be my solution- Google App Inventor.  For those not aware of it, App Inventor is a graphical programming interface capable of assembling basic Android Apps.  All anyone needs is a Gmail account and they can begin using the App Inventor interface here:

http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/

Within an hour I found some great tutorials and was able to make my first app which is a simple cat that can meow to the user.  Admittedly this is fairly useless, but allows anyone to understand the interface quite well.

From the App Inventor dashboard the user downloads a Flash file to their computer which opens up the "Blocks Editor".  This is where the logic programming actually occurs.  Once the user has some basic functions they can test it on a built in phone emulator.  This works out fairly well, but it seems to be flaky and takes a long time to respond- remember it's free after all.

Within my first day the end result was I had several apps in process, and one already uploaded to App Market!

Lessons learned:

- Anyone can use App Inventor
- Anyone can upload an app to the market (more on this in future)
- You do not need programming language knowledge (but basic understanding helps)
- An App can make money the first day! (more on this later)

More on this to come.

Cheers