Google reminds us App Inventor shutting down at end of year, download your projects now

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Google overnight sent out e-mails reminding users of its expiring App Inventor that it will no longer support the project on Dec. 31, 2011. As you'll recall, App Inventor was a tool that allowed anyone with arguably no programming skills to create Android apps, though it certainly wasn't quite as easy as that sounds. Google's shutting things down but open-sourcing the project to MIT, and you can migrate your projects over if you want to keep them. Head to App Inventor and hit the "Download all projects" button and you'll get a handy zip file.

Full text of the e-mail's after the break.

Dear App Inventor User,As we announced on the App Inventor Announcement Forum, Google will end support for App Inventor on December 31, 2011, after which data in appinventorbeta.com will not be accessible and will be deleted from Google servers.  You can preserve your App Inventor projects by simply clicking on the Download All Projects button on your My Projects page.  This will download to your computer a zipped archive of all your projects.  We recommend you retrieve your projects well before December 31st. By the end of 2011 Google will also be making the complete App Inventor source code publicly available under an open source license, so that anyone can study the code and modify it as they desire.  In order to ensure the future success of App Inventor, Google has funded the establishment of a Center for Mobile Learning at the MIT Media Lab.  Sometime in the first quarter of 2012, the Center plans to provide an App Inventor service for general public access, similar to the one Google is currently running.In order for you to continue working with your projects in an open source instance (MIT or otherwise) of App Inventor you will need to download your data from appinventorbeta.com before December 31st and later upload them to an open source instance as it becomes available.Please visit the App Inventor user forums to get future updates on App Inventor.  You can also visit http://mobilelearning.mit.edu/ for updates on what is being done with App Inventor at MIT.The App Inventor Team

Phil Nickinson
Phil Nickinson
2 Comments
  • Wow was that even open for a year?
  • not trying to be that guy, but is it supposed to be,
    "Google reminds us App Inventor shutting down[...]" or... i remember jumping into this & making horrible apps that were gigantically over-sized in comparison to the smaller size that they would have been if i had actually learned how to code. but it probably did help out a ton of people.