Writing an Android Phone App
Once you understand how web services work you'll want to try your hand
at writing a native phone application. See
api101
if you need basic information on web services. To write an application
for an Apple device there is one choice, learn java. The same choice
exists for Android devices with the addition of an easier way.
For reasons unknown people at mit created
App Inventor whereby novice
programmers can create Android applications without knowing java!
This is similar to the way that Visual Basic can be used to write a
windows application without needing to know the ins and outs of the
windows api.
App Inventor is absolutely incredible. You drag and drop Lego® like
programming blocks into a screen or screens to build an android app
without having to know java. You can install the app on your phone and
even put it in Google Play as I have done with an app I wrote. To get
app into Google Play all you have to do is pay to register as an
app developer ($25 change).
It helps to know a computer programming language. The same would be
true of Visual Basic. You'd be successful faster if knew programming
concepts and just had to learn how to use the tool. There are tons of
App Inventor tutorials to help learn what the individual building blocks are
capable of doing. There's a Web building block that lets you call web
service and there are building blocks to parse out the data that is returned.
Here's an
explanation of an Android app I wrote
using App Inventor.