This is not the end of the line for App Inventor, though. “Google will discontinue App Inventor as a Google product and will open source the code,” the announcement says. “Additionally, because of App Inventor’s success in the education space, we are exploring opportunities to support the educational use of App Inventor on an open source platform.”

Sponsor

App Inventor lets users build mobile applications for Android using a graphical interface of buttons and menus, requiring no knowledge of programming languages or command lines. It uses the Open Blocks Java library to create visually-represented blocks of code, so users can just select and insert features from a menu.

App Inventor reflects Google’s oft-repeated position of “openness” by reducing the barriers to people publishing their ideas to the Web. This has made the tool popular among computer science educators and everyday life-hackers alike.

After App Inventor’s launch, many were skeptical about the benefits of such a tool, saying it could lead to an influx of “junk applications.” But MIT Professor Harold Abelson, who contributed to App Inventor’s initial development, said its goal was “to enable people to become creators, not just consumers, in this mobile world,” and it certainly did for some users.

As Hack Education’s Audrey Watters reports, the tool was popular among educators who could use the tool to introduce their students to computer science. The comments on the post announcing the news are full of mournful messages from educators. “This is devastating news for me, a high school teacher,” one commenter writes. “I’ve introduced many students to the beauty and joy of computer science by starting them in App Inventor.”

Other commenters are concerned that making the App Inventor code open-source won’t be enough to sustain it. “I fear we can not run this on our own,” commenter James writes. “No way.”

Discuss

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This is not the end of the line for App Inventor, though. “Google will discontinue App Inventor as a Google product and will open source the code,” the announcement says. “Additionally, because of App Inventor’s success in the education space, we are exploring opportunities to support the educational use of App Inventor on an open source platform.”

Sponsor

App Inventor lets users build mobile applications for Android using a graphical interface of buttons and menus, requiring no knowledge of programming languages or command lines. It uses the Open Blocks Java library to create visually-represented blocks of code, so users can just select and insert features from a menu.

App Inventor reflects Google’s oft-repeated position of “openness” by reducing the barriers to people publishing their ideas to the Web. This has made the tool popular among computer science educators and everyday life-hackers alike.

After App Inventor’s launch, many were skeptical about the benefits of such a tool, saying it could lead to an influx of “junk applications.” But MIT Professor Harold Abelson, who contributed to App Inventor’s initial development, said its goal was “to enable people to become creators, not just consumers, in this mobile world,” and it certainly did for some users.

As Hack Education’s Audrey Watters reports, the tool was popular among educators who could use the tool to introduce their students to computer science. The comments on the post announcing the news are full of mournful messages from educators. “This is devastating news for me, a high school teacher,” one commenter writes. “I’ve introduced many students to the beauty and joy of computer science by starting them in App Inventor.”

Other commenters are concerned that making the App Inventor code open-source won’t be enough to sustain it. “I fear we can not run this on our own,” commenter James writes. “No way.”

Discuss

Go to Source

Sponsor

The company today announced Version 8.1 of its User Virtualization Platform (UVP). It collects all the user-specific items, including your desktop settings, data files, and the like, and decouple these from the OS or the apps, centralize it in their management framework, and then deliver the personalization either to standard or virtualized desktops. This is similar to what Viewfinity and Dell’s Kace appliances do with user profile management policies. All of these vendors separate the user component of the desktop from the operating system and applications and manage this component independently, ensuring that the user can access all of their information from any desktop or device, and allow users to work with whichever devices and applications help them be most productive.

The new version features a bunch of feature enhancements and performance improvements, a completely new architecture and expanded management features. It can be used to migrate desktops from older versions to Windows 7, too. As you can see in the screenshot above, you can store each user’s custom Registry settings and they can be browsed with a graphical interface.

The price starts at $100 per user with quantity discounts available for the full suite of products, with lower price points for limited functionality. The product works with Windows desktops since XP.

Discuss

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NetStress

Not only is NetStress capable of measuring network performance it also has a neat graphical interface, if you are into graphs than consider NetStress. Just like Iperf you need to install NetStress on both the client and server to properly measure two ends of the network.

Features

• single instance of the application (i.e. each instance can be used as server or server plus client)
• supports both TCP and UDP data transfers
• supports multiple data streams
• variable TCP / UDP segment size
• rate of packet transmission (Packets Per Second)
• variable Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU)
• uplink and downlink modes
• auto node discovery
• choice of display units (KBps, Kbps, MBps, Mbps)
• support for multiple network adapters

Source nutsaboutnets.com

Perhaps the only downside is that unlike Iperf, NetStress is not a portable application. NetStress is available free charge.

Download: NetStress

LAN Speed Test

LAN Speed Test is another options for those of you who need to measure one side of the network, in order to measure you are required to provide access to an existing network file share where LAN Speed Test can write a file to. You can say this application takes a simpler approach to measuring your network.

The application is available in two forms free and paid. Just like Iperf LAN Speed Test is a portable application.

Download: LAN Speed Test

I still prefer Iperf since I’ve been around many IT professionals who swear by it, but in the end its your choice.

Christopher Kahler is a co-founder and CEO of Qriously, a service for measuring real-time public sentiment by replacing ads with questions in smartphone apps. Follow him on Twitter

In late 2010, Apple approved 14-year-old Robert Nay’s app, Bubble Ball, for publishing on the App Store, where it quickly racked up 2 million users and, for a short while, even wrested the ever-popular Angry Birds from its perch at the top of the download charts. It’s a staggering achievement for a young teen with no formal programming experience -– never mind education. No skills. Nada. Zip.

Nay used an application called Corona that essentially allows users to build smartphone apps using a graphical interface, eliminating the need of any coding skills. He’s a pioneering user of the next generation of platform dependencies — innovations upon which further innovations can be built.

The term “platform dependency,” referring to products and services that are symbiotic with an existing platform (FarmVille on Facebook, Tweetdeck on Twitter, Rapportive on Gmail, and so on), has been discussed at length in several recent blog posts that weigh its dangers and opportunities.

While these relationships are not unique to “our” industry, the heady pace of evolution in the information sector, modeled with equal parts idealism and fantasy, is pointing toward some fascinating outcomes. The most fascinating of these is also the most paradoxical: The smartest kids are coding themselves into unemployment.

Before I’m viciously indicted with committing the Luddite fallacy, give me a chance to qualify: Smart kids code platforms that are making it increasingly redundant to know how to code — look at Nay for instance. As such, coding as a skill is becoming a casualty of efficiency, which is a beautiful thing. Coding is a means to an end, and if new methods are developed that enable us normal folks to achieve comparable results, then that’s a win in my book.

To a certain extent this is already happening, albeit to a less romantic degree. Take Google App Engine for instance. Instead of needing to set up whole server infrastructures, you just upload a simple web app and Google handles everything else, from load-balancing to scaling. Many companies don’t even go that far. A Facebook Page, with its built-in tools to distribute content, advertise, promote and engage with an audience, is often all you need.

Beyond the purely technical realm, services and layers are appearing to make aesthetic skills more and more redundant as well. Enterprise software company Cloudera used 99designs, which recently scored $25 million in funding, to crowdsource its logo on the cheap. And apps like Instagram and Retro Camera that allow users with little “skill” to take brilliant photographs.

Eventually, you won’t need to have any technical knowledge in a world increasingly defined by technology.

Rather, the only thing you will need to have is an idea, and having good ones will be the only meaningful thing setting you apart from others. I like to think of it as the triumph of creativity over learned skill — a change that some believe has ramifications for formal education as well.

The only remaining question is: Where are your ideas going to bubble up from?

More About: apps, platforms, programming, web apps, Web Development

For more Dev & Design coverage:

• Follow Mashable Dev & Design on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Dev & Design channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

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Christopher Kahler is a co-founder and CEO of Qriously, a service for measuring real-time public sentiment by replacing ads with questions in smartphone apps. Follow him on Twitter

In late 2010, Apple approved 14-year-old Robert Nay’s app, Bubble Ball, for publishing on the App Store, where it quickly racked up 2 million users and, for a short while, even wrested the ever-popular Angry Birds from its perch at the top of the download charts. It’s a staggering achievement for a young teen with no formal programming experience -– never mind education. No skills. Nada. Zip.

Nay used an application called Corona that essentially allows users to build smartphone apps using a graphical interface, eliminating the need of any coding skills. He’s a pioneering user of the next generation of platform dependencies — innovations upon which further innovations can be built.

The term “platform dependency,” referring to products and services that are symbiotic with an existing platform (FarmVille on Facebook, Tweetdeck on Twitter, Rapportive on Gmail, and so on), has been discussed at length in several recent blog posts that weigh its dangers and opportunities.

While these relationships are not unique to “our” industry, the heady pace of evolution in the information sector, modeled with equal parts idealism and fantasy, is pointing toward some fascinating outcomes. The most fascinating of these is also the most paradoxical: The smartest kids are coding themselves into unemployment.

Before I’m viciously indicted with committing the Luddite fallacy, give me a chance to qualify: Smart kids code platforms that are making it increasingly redundant to know how to code — look at Nay for instance. As such, coding as a skill is becoming a casualty of efficiency, which is a beautiful thing. Coding is a means to an end, and if new methods are developed that enable us normal folks to achieve comparable results, then that’s a win in my book.

To a certain extent this is already happening, albeit to a less romantic degree. Take Google App Engine for instance. Instead of needing to set up whole server infrastructures, you just upload a simple web app and Google handles everything else, from load-balancing to scaling. Many companies don’t even go that far. A Facebook Page, with its built-in tools to distribute content, advertise, promote and engage with an audience, is often all you need.

Beyond the purely technical realm, services and layers are appearing to make aesthetic skills more and more redundant as well. Enterprise software company Cloudera used 99designs, which recently scored $25 million in funding, to crowdsource its logo on the cheap. And apps like Instagram and Retro Camera that allow users with little “skill” to take brilliant photographs.

Eventually, you won’t need to have any technical knowledge in a world increasingly defined by technology.

Rather, the only thing you will need to have is an idea, and having good ones will be the only meaningful thing setting you apart from others. I like to think of it as the triumph of creativity over learned skill — a change that some believe has ramifications for formal education as well.

The only remaining question is: Where are your ideas going to bubble up from?

More About: apps, platforms, programming, web apps, Web Development

For more Dev & Design coverage:

• Follow Mashable Dev & Design on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Dev & Design channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Go to Source

One thousand apps for the launch is impressive, but what’s in it for web developers? Here’s a quick roundup of a few apps that Mac-loving web developers might want to check out (URLs point to the Mac App Store so you’ll need OS X 10.6.6 for the links to work).

• iSlice (free) — This slick little app opens PhotoShop documents and slices them up. ISlice retains all the layer info in the Photoshop file so it’s easy to hide background layers and focus on what you need to extract. If you already own Photoshop there’s no point to this one, but if you frequently need to slice comps and don’t want to pay Photoshop’s hefty price tag, iSlice fits the bill.

• OAuth for Mac ($3) — OAuth is pain if all you want to do is pull a bit of data out of say, the Twitter API. OAuth for Mac handles the OAuth calls for you and quickly generates a token. I haven’t had a chance to test it yet, but it looks like it would be handy for testing and developing quick scripts.

• Colorbender ($2) — A nice looking color-scheme generator with hex and RGB values. There are tons of free color-scheme generators on the web, but if you’d like a Mac-native version, Colorbender looks like it would fit the bill.

• mColorMeter ($3) — Ever wanted to know what color your favorite website is using in its menubar? With mColorMeter you can just hover over any pixel on your screen and the app will tell you the value in RGB, Hex and Munsell colors.

• Base ($17) — Base is nice-looking graphical interface for working with SQLite databases. It’s not cheap, but $17 seems a small price to pay if it means never having to work the sqlite3 command line again.

• Gitbox ($40) — Hardly a day goes by without someone claiming there are no good Git GUIs. We haven’t tried Gitbox so we’re not endorsing it, especially at $40, but it does offer a very nice-looking graphical UI for Git. And the app comes bundled with the official Git binaries so there’s nothing extra to install — just download the app and start using Git. Great for the command-line-phobic, but seasoned Git users will likely turn up their noses at the price. (See this thread on Hacker News for some more thoughts on Gitbox.)

• Honorable Mentions — There are quite a few apps in the new store that have been around forever. We love the all-in-one development tool Coda ($100), Text Wrangler (free), BBEdit ($125) and Pixelmator ($30).

The biggest downside to Apple’s new App Store for Mac is that there are no trial versions of the software. For that, you’ll have to head to the developers’ site and (assuming there’s a trial version available) download a good ol’ .dmg file.

See Also:

• Mac App Store Launches with 1,000 Apps, Big Discounts [Gadget Lab]
• Mobile Safari Gets More HTML5 Love in iOS Update
• Apple’s HTML5 Showcase Less About Web Standards, More About Apple

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In this Quick Look, we’re highlighting Ganttic. The developer describes Ganttic as an online project management app for scheduling resources and projects. It provides a user-friendly graphical interface and interactive Gantt chart for real time collaboration, perfect for resource management and project scheduling. We belive our product is the best alternative to MS.

Read on for more information and screenshots!

Screenshots

Ganttic

Ganttic

About the App

Here are the top five features you can expect to see in the latest version:

• Multi-project management
• Drag & drop rescheduling
• Color coding of your plan
• Custom data fields
• Advanced user rights

Requirements: Web browser
Price: $0.98
Developer: Ganttic LLC

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Subtitles is an application created by the site www.subtitles.com.br. Sized at only 542 KB, it is a Windows compatible program which installs without any glitches. After installing the program you will notice that new entries have been made to your desktop or Start Menu. Actually the program has no graphical interface at all. It works in quite a unique way.

With Subtitles installed, all you do is right click on a video file. You will find that the context menu options now have a new entry that reads “Look for Subtitles.” You can enter this option and click on the language you want the subtitles in. After selecting the language, a search will automatically be executed on the program’s website. The search results will correspond to your video file and a far lesser degree of trial-and-error will be required. You will not have to enter any text in fields – simply right click on your video file and select your preferred subtitles language.

To download the Windows program Subtitles, visit www.subtitles.com.br/subtitles.htm.

Brought To You By

Do you want to advertise here? Click to get more info…

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Among the new features is the ability to narrow any search down to spans of a mere five minutes. While it’s not for everyone, if you’re trying to find better ways to filter the fire hose of information that is real-time data, Delicious’ new search tool is an easy way to do it.

There’s also a very cool new interactive graph for filtering bookmarks around larger chunks of time. For example, if you wanted to see all your bookmarks added on this day last year, just click the interactive graph, select the start and end points and then click the search button to narrow the results.

While narrowing by time is hardly a new feature, the graphical interface is considerably more intuitive (and cooler) than simply plugging your dates in a text field. If nothing else, it’s a nice example of how much careful attention to interface design can improve a website.

In fact, the new Delicious seems to have something of fetish for charts and graphs. Charts also appear on each link’s “count” page, showing who has bookmarked it. For example, the Webmonkey homepage has been bookmarked over 5500 times, but the new chart (click the chart icon to see it) reveals a huge spike in June 2008 shortly after we relaunched the site.

Delicious’ new charts aren’t limited to the site either. There’s a new “Tagometer” widget that allows you to embed a chart on your own pages showing the number of saves over time and the most frequently-used tags. Right now you’ll need to cut-and-paste some JavaScript into your pages, but it probably won’t be long before someone creates a plug-in for WordPress and other platforms.

The final change Delicious has unveiled is an iPhone-optimized mobile site. The site is geared toward making it easier to bookmark pages on the iPhone, so you can read them later. While we prefer Instapaper for that sort of thing, the Delicious mobile site has other options — like quickly browsing recent bookmarks — which heavy users will appreciate.

See Also:

• Revamped Delicious Turns to Twitter for Real-Time Search
• Send Web Video to Boxee With Delicious Bookmarks
• Delicious Gets New Look, Loses Dots

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And, it is also the first step where you can show that you care about the security of the website & all the data collected.

Although you can control/improve the security of the website, it is sometimes the weak passwords used that may have unwanted consequences.

Guiding users to have a strong password with the help of password strength meters, besides being an easy process, will help improving the security of the whole & show that the website pays attention to it.

Here are 10 password strength meter scripts for a better registration interface:

PasswordMeter

PasswordMeter is a JavaScript function that checks the strengths of passwords with a well-defined algorithm.

And, the website of the resource nicely displays how the strength is calculated.

Ultimate Password Strength Meter

This password strength meter is an improved version of this script. It that has a graphical interface (uses Prototype & Script.aculo.us) that shows the strength of the input.

Yet Another Password Meter

Based on the PasswordMeter script, YAPM is an improved version which enables you to measure the strength of your passwords and use the functions inside to adapt in your websites.

jQuery Password Strength Meter

Password Strength Meter is a jQuery plug-in that provides a smart algorithm to detect a password strength

Javascript Password Strength Meter

With the help of regular expressions that checks the repeated characters, uppercase-lowercase usage, the string length & more, this password meter script generates a score for the password.

How to Make a Password Strength Meter Like Google

Based on the code here, this is a JavaScript password meter. It displays the result with a color bar & an information text.

jQuery Password Strength Meter Plugin

This jQuery plugin calculates the password strength similar to th other solutions like checking the repeated characters, amount of numbers, special characters used, etc. But with a difference takes into consideration the username value too.

Password Strength Field (A jQuery Plugin)

Using the Password Strength Field plugin, you can instantly add this functionality to a password field.

It can be configured to have a custom "point system" where every variable can be defined.

PHP Password Strength Meter

A detailed tutorial on creating an Ajaxed password meter with PHP. This script checks the input at the server-side rather client-side.

A JSON result (strength value) is returned from the Ajax request and according to that value, the strength of the password is displayed.

Password Strength Meter With Ext JS

This script is built with Ext JS and displays the password strength with an animated bar.

Special Downloads:
Free Admin Template For Web Applications
jQuery Dynamic Drag’n Drop
ScheduledTweets

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Tags: Javascript, Password, Php

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Twitter reviews

There are a wide variety of web applications, Twitter accounts, and even iPhone apps that can help people do everything from track popular hashtags to graph out recent Twitter trends. As Twitter grows, this information will only become more useful for understanding what is popular at any given moment, or even what was popular in the past.

Web-based Applications

1. Twitter Search: The simplest way to see trends on Twitter is on their official search page. Hot trends on Twitter appear on the search page and on the Twitter homepage, and clicking any will bring up a feed of the public conversation.

2. Twist: For those who are visual, Twist provides a graphical interface to see trends and keywords on Twitter. It not only lists out the hot trends over the last few hours, days, and week, but it provides embeddable charts and the ability to compare trends.

3. Monitter: Monitter is one of the best ways to track trends in real-time. Type in keywords and it will automatically update with the most recent tweets containing those terms. Add or remove columns to give you the right amount of information.

4. Hashtags.org: The popular webpage on Twitter hashtags also provides graphs on hashtag use just by hovering over the hashtag. There are also pages that show the most popular and newest hashtags, but their uptime is unreliable.

5. Tweetmeme: Looking for the most popular links on Twitter? Tweetmeme is the epicenter link sharing on the service.

6. Plodt: This website is a user-generated trend tracker based on tagging and ranking your tweets. It requires you to follow the Plodt Twitter account to participate. But even without participating, its timelines, tags, and statistics are still useful and interesting.

7. Twitturly: Twitturly is another way to track top-shared URLs. The interface allows users to see all of the active tweets that have shared a specific link.

Twitter Accounts

8. twithority: Twithority is an easy way to have the most recent Twitter trends tweeted to you. The links provide a view of Twitter trends based on both time and “authority.”

9. TweetingTrends: TweetingTrends is an even simpler way to keep up with Twitter Trends. Links go directly to Twitter Search.

10. PowerSearch: PowerSearch not only tweets about emerging trends, but daily and weekly trends that you may have missed out on.

11. gtrend: gtrend is short for “Google Trend.” It updates users on the most recent trends within Google Search. Follow this account to know about trends across the wider web. No, this doesn’t track Twitter trends, but it’s a great way to compare trends.

iPhone Apps

12. Retweet [iTunes Link]: Retweet, which we have previously reviewed, provides a simple iPhone interface for reading top retweets, links, and retweeting them out yourself. It costs 99 cents.

13. TweetieTweetie reviews [iTunes Link]: Did you know that this popular Twitter also has a section that displays what is currently trending on Twitter? Not only that, but you can save trending items as well.

14. Twitter Trend [iTunes Link]: This free application provides a simple tag cloud for looking at hot, rising, or emerging trends on Twitter.

15. Summizer [iTunes Link]: Summizer is an advanced query Twitter search tool. It allows users to view trending topics or find specific types of tweets, i.e. Tweets sent by or from a specific person, or tweets that don’t include specific words. Summizer has both a paid and a free version.

How Do You Track Twitter Trends?

Do you have tips, tricks and tools for tracking Twitter trends? Let us know in the comments!

Tags: hashtags, iphone apps, monitter, twitter, twitter trends