I've made my very first app for my Android phone! It's not an all-singing, all-dancing program, but it's an app, all the same. Why make an app? I've always wondered how to make an Android application for a while, and also wanted a way of making our College library induction leaflet available to more students, and making it instantly available and updatable. I recently found a couple of websites that you can pay to have an app developed for you, or make an app from an RSS feed fro free, but I wanted one where I could add content myself. I came across App Inventor for Android (beta), which is one of the gadgets on Google Labs. It looked just the thing I needed to make my own app.

The blurb on the website says:

Creating an App Inventor app begins in your browser, where you design how the app will look. Then, like fitting together puzzle pieces, you set your app's behavior. All the while, through a live connection between your computer and your phone, your app appears on your phone

(screenshot of the Blocks Editor)

The basic app that I made uses text-based lists and a basic navigation system to provide the content, and it's even got a button that lets you dial the library's phone number! I've so far added things like opening times and how many books you can borrow, but it's a start. The App Inventor lets you add all sorts of complex programming, using drag and drop blocks that interlink, and updates the output via either an online phone emulator, or your own phone linked to the computer. It's a great little program, and it's got enough scope and complexity for me to add links to (and play) online induction videos, external content, and send updates to users' phones, all using the same application.

One shortcoming of the Google Android App Inventor, is that you can't, at the moment, add your self-made app to the Android market. You can, however, download it and share it with your friends and students.

(screenshot of the completed app).

Live Video Apps for your website

Ok, so most of this posterous page is going to be blagged (or blogged) from other websites and blogs, but hey, how on earth can people share information if they don't expect other people to share it for them? I found this website when I was reading the Official Posterous Blog, all about Posterous Hack Day. The live video apps from a company called Tokbox look really good. Just embed the code into your website, or blog, and you get a live video chat room.

Why do I think it's good?

I just like the idea of live video in a blog or website. If I had a lot of followers of my other blog - mistrustmusic - I'd use Tokbox to play some of my tracks live on the web.

Tag Cloud Creator

I've never been a big fan of Tagclouds. Can't see the use of them, especially as I work in e-learning and people keep talking about them. However, I've never thought about tag clouds that look a bit out of the ordinary, like the ones made by Tagxedo. You can take any text, or the contents of a website, and turn them into a tag cloud. Not any old tag cloud, but one where you can change the shape, colours, background of the cloud, even rotate the text when you point over a word.

Why do I think it's good?

It makes tag clouds more interesting! I like things that are gimmicky and this certainly is - your can buy a t-shirt with your own tag cloud printed on!