hi gary, glad to see that you're an App Inventor user! yes, Google has shut down Labs of which App Inventor was part of, however it has since found a new home at MIT: http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2011/08/new-mit-center-for-mobile-learning-with.html
you're correct in that TinyWebDB -- http://www.appinventorbeta.com/learn/reference/other/tinywebdb.html -- is a useful resource at providing a backend via App Engine for your App Inventor apps. this is not a new idea as many mobile (AI4A, standard Android, or iOS) app utilize App Engine in this way... one example is http://bit.ly/lft-aeb. many people have confused App Engine with hosting only web or user-facing apps, but gaming and mobile apps are valid use cases for the platform as well. there are (at least) two ways to run App Engine apps, the development server runs locally on your box (for testing, development, staging, etc.), and the live production server(s) run in Google datacenters. you upload your app to Google, and your app is accessible (nearly) globally. "will it be a bad idea?" is a subjective question. of course here at Google we don't believe so, but you may be expecting something else. i don't believe the generic appinvtinywebdb<http://appinvtinywebdb.appspot.com/> will be taken down (because it is an App Engine service, not part of App Inventor), but it's better if you run it yourself. you're not sharing with anyone and have control over the app. users should be able to get Hello World working by following the online tutorials, available in Python<http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/gettingstarted/>, Java <http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/java/gettingstarted/>, or Go<http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/go/gettingstarted/>. it's true that the platform requires "real" coding as there isn't a builder interface like that of AI4A or similar tools like Scratch or Alice. in addition, our team travels around the world -- http://code.google.com/team-- to give talks and hands-on tutorials on the platform to help them get up-to-speed and to further educate the world about our products. hope this helps! -wesley On Thu, Sep 1, 2011 at 7:43 AM, Gary Frederick <[email protected]> wrote: > Howdy all > > One of the arrows that got dropped when Google shut down the Labs was App > Inventor http://www.appinventorbeta.com/about/ > > One of the nifty things folks learned with App Inventor is how to use > TinyWebDB, a component that gave us budding Android developers a web > database. It was easy to learn and the examples used App Engine as the > service. > > Can you run App Engine on your own server (still)? > Will it be a bad idea? > > and > > Some of the folks getting up and connecting to GAE had a hard time, a few > never got it to say 'hello world'. > I did my best to help the lost, if nothing else it kept most of them out of > here. > > Will there be some arrangement for those App Inventors when MIT takes over? > -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - "Core Python Programming", Prentice Hall, (c)2007,2001 "Python Fundamentals", Prentice Hall, (c)2009 http://corepython.com wesley.chun : wesc+api at google.com : @wescpy developer relations :: google cloud products -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google App Engine" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine?hl=en.
