App Inventor opens its source and doors at its new home at MIT

Toward the middle of last year we found out that Google would be shutting the doors on its Google Labs department. While all of this news was somewhat sad, it also left those that took on their own projects via Google App Inventor worried that all the time they spent learning, reading and creating their own apps would have been for nothing. During the final countdown of the ultimate closure of App Inventor we found out that MIT wanted to take over the project and keep the services alive. Those of you that were already signed up and using App Inventor no doubt received the same emails I did on how to download your projects from Google for future use. If you didn’t snag your files, you are not completely out of luck. Check you Google Docs section, you should have a zip file in there from Google containing your projects to download. While not everyone’s projects survived, they are estimating that 95% of them did.

Now that the doors of Google App Inventor are officially closed, MIT has taken the reins and has recently made the code for the project open source for the community and world to tinker with. The news pretty much stops there for now though. There is very little in the way of documentation and support for the service currently. They haven;t set up their servers yet, so you have no where officially to upload your modifications. It is still a big process and large undertaking. MIT wants to get everything set up and working flawlessly before they open up the servers to the public. We can respect that.

The most recent update from MIT slates the service to be up and running in Q1. They have a beta service available for you to get in, but you need to fill out the request form and they will grant you access as soon as they can. Much like when App Inventor first launched.

If you are eager to keep up to date with App Inventor and its new home at MIT, be sure to keep an eye on their news at  appinventoredu.mit.edu.

Source: MIT via Androidpolice