A TechCrunch “Posts API” App

Posted on July 13, 2010 by wolber

App Inventor for Android app that talks to TechCrunch API

Jason Kincaid posted an excellent  TechCrunch article on App Inventor and his initial experience. His first idea was to create create “an application that would allow a user to monitor TechCrunch headlines for keywords, which could come in handy if a startup wanted to get notified whenever we wrote a post about them.”

He quickly was stymied, realizing that App Inventor doesn’t yet have an RSS feed component. App Inventor does have a more general web service component, however, TinyWebDB. I used it, and App Engine for Python, to code up a simplified App Inventor version of his idea, a TechCrunch Posts API Android Client.

You can download the app and its source code at the link above. The app took me 20 minutes to create.

The sample doesn’t demonstrate what a non-programmer can do with App Inventor, as I had to write some Python code. It does demonstrate how App Inventor can be used by programmers and/or teams with a programmer to quickly develop and prototype apps.

Filed under: api communication | Tagged: , , , , | 1 Comment »

App Inventor at Community Colleges

Posted on July 7, 2010 by wolber

I just finished teaching a 5-day App Inventor workshop at MPICT, a conference for computer science and IT community college teachers in the Northwest US. App Inventor was a hit– many of the instructors plan to incorporate App Inventor in their courses.

What I learned is our community colleges are in good hands: what a fantastic group of teachers! I learned a great deal about teaching in general and teaching beginning CS courses specifically.

Filed under: teaching, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | 2 Comments »

USF App Inventor Contest

Posted on June 26, 2010 by wolber

Photos from the contest

We recently held a programming contest for my App Inventor for Android programming class. The students in the class were non-techies: their fields of study included history, communications, literature, media, business– just about every major in the university other than computer science. The folks from Google’s App Inventor team and some USF Administrators served as judges. The winning team created DroidMuni, an app that gives you personalized “next bus times” information about your MUNI bus line. Other apps included:

Park It
No Text While Driving
FrontlineSMS
Dating AppVice
Make it Count

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App Inventor at USF (the video)

Posted on June 17, 2010 by wolber

Google featured yours truly and Chris Witte, one of the students in my original App Inventor class, in this video. The clip was played at the Google booth during the ACM Conference on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE 2010).

Filed under: students, teaching | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

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