![]() Basic but functional versions of common types of games-top-down racers, variations of the Angry Birds concept, and plenty of shooters-provide jumping-off points for a fairly wide range of projects. ![]() It comes preloaded with sample apps, giving users the ability to tinker immediately. GameSalad's jarringly stripped-down appearance belies its capabilities. Much the way Photoshop is an application for editing images, and iMovie is an application for creating videos, App Inventor and GameSalad are applications for creating. What App Inventor and GameSalad do is automate the creation of code, hiding it from view. Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to play Anyone who wants to code an app for Microsoft Windows Phone had better know C#. Android developers should be versed in Java. IPhone developers should be familiar with a programming language called Objective-C. Smartphones may inspire countless "wouldn't it be cool if." moments, but the gulf between those who can conceive of apps and those who can build them is expansive, and filled with code-cold, syntactical, inscrutable code. GameSalad is a similar application for Mac OS, which streamlines the process of creating Web, iPad and, of course, iPhone games to a point where nonprogrammers have found success in the notoriously crowded App Store. "That thing caught on like wildfire in the forums," says Jason Tyler, author of the recently released instructional book Google App Inventor for Android. Their apps were built with Google's App Inventor, one of a wave of new tools designed to allow people without programming experience to create apps and games for their phones and tablets. Here's the twist: Neither Raben nor Carolan are programmers. So, after communicating with the app's creator-a firefighter from northern Virginia named Emmet Carolan-he built his own version, tailored to his particular department's hoses and nozzles, with an added feature for calculating pressure loss due to elevation change. He liked what he saw, and had a few ideas for improving it. Mike Raben, a firefighter in Louisville, Colo., found a more modern solution online: a custom-built calculator app for Google Android phones. Many departments post cheat sheets for estimating pressure. It's a complicated calculation, dependent on hose diameter, type and length, as well as water velocity. ![]() Before ever suiting up, all fire-engine operators are taught about friction loss, in which water pressure is reduced by friction inside a fire hose.
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