technically speaking

With App Inventor, Google has put the power into the people’s hands. One no longer needs to learn a complicated computer language in order to turn their idea into something real. This is a polar opposite to the approach Apple has taken with their most recent terms of service (v3.3.1), which made for many headlines on how they cut Flash from being a potential development platforms for the iPhone. Will App Inventor empower the masses or as Job’s stated (regarding flash based apps) flood the market with substandard applications?

More then likely there will be a hundreds of quickly put together dumb and/or kitschy apps. Ideally this is where Darwin’s laws of survival will come into play filtering out the deluge of iFart type applications. On the flip side, there will also be some quality apps that may not have seen the light of day if it weren’t for the reduced skill set needed to create them. In general, I see App Inventor being used by designers and developers to quickly prototype an idea before having it developed via traditional methods.

Regardless of how App Inventor is ultimately used, it’s the democratization of technology that is the game changer.

Links:
Google App Inventor

It’s New Year’s Day 2009, and people are busy making and breaking their resolutions for a better future. Others are already saying 2008 is passé. Well to counter all this futurism I instead offer you this look back to a time when computers lacked all the visual power of today. Back when screens were all black and green. When images were either all blocky or made up of keyboard characters. For some this is a past that you’ve never had a chance to enjoy…

…well now you can with Video Terminal, a little app created by Arpit and myself that lets you watch video in three old school styles: Mosaic, ASCII and ASCII in color. Directions and additional info available at CIM Labs.

Note: you may need to install Adobe AIR to run the video terminal app.

Links:
CIM Labs
Video Terminal
Arpit’s Blog