Inventive User-Created Apps Growing in Importance

I just posted the following comment in a thread on ZDNet and thought you might find it interesting. Feel free to contact me if you want to talk more about Inventive Users. The post was a response to a user who dismissed the whole idea of user-created apps by saying, "Only a tiny part of workers can really create apps"

Your comment is perhaps a bit antiquated. As a pioneer in the field for which I coined the term "Inventive User" more than 25 years ago, this allegedly newly spotted trend is a yawner to those of us who have been monitoring this space for years.

Employees will bypass the IT department whenever it suits their needs to do so if they can find accessible tools with which to do so. Many years ago, Apple produced a tool called HyperCard that led to tens if not hundreds of thousands of apps being written in the trenches to solve problems that were too specific and small to get the IT shop's attention. A logical successor to that amazing technology (which Apple blew completely) is called LiveCode from Runtime Revolution is even more empowering than its ancestor. Reasonably intelligent employees with an unmet need for processing power will find tools and use them to do things the IT shop can't or won't approach.

I don't know or recommend QuickBase, but I can tell you this: my corporate clients get a clear message from me in consultation situations that they need to find ways to encourage Inventive Users to assist in making the organization more efficient and effective. At a time when most if not all companies are asking fewer employees to do more work with less money, this sort of activity is becoming a key, if invisible, part of a company's IT picture.


Tagged HyperCard Inventive User LiveCode Technology

LiveCode (Formerly Runtime Revolution) Gaining Some Serious Cred

My favorite programming language is gaining some serious traction in the world of iOS development.

Formerly called Runtime Revolution after the company that made it, the more recently christened LiveCode is up for a MacUser award in the innovations category and a fairly simple demo app written using only LiveCode has gained significant recognition both on YouTube and on the iPhone/iPad platforms in Apple's App Store.

The app is called Sheep Herder and while it's a bit simple-minded to make a really playable game, it has enjoyed a four-star rating and lots of great user comments. The YT video shows the game's designer/developer building the complete app in LiveCode in just over three hours. (BTW, you can download the entire source code for the app here, but it won't do you much good if you don't own LiveCode and an iOS developer account with Apple.)

LiveCode is good enough that a number of folks who have seen the video (upwards of 250,000!) and the game have expressed doubts that the story that the game was written without using XCode or Objective-C. I can say this: LiveCode is certainly fully capable of creating the game and a lot more complexity than that. Could a LiveCode newbie do it? Sure. Not in three hours, probably, but certainly it's possible. And LiveCode has one of the shallowest learning curves for a programming language I, a language junkie, have ever encountered.

The only reason I don't still  live in LiveCode as I once did is that it's still not quite where it needs to be for me to build Web apps, i.e., apps that run entirely in the browser. You still need a plugin for that and folks seem more reluctant than ever to download and install plugins outside a  handful that have gained reputations for reliability and safety.
Tagged LiveCode Smartphone Technology
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