Coding an application from scratch is an intense affair. Libraries, references, classes, includes, programming patterns and if you’re not a programmer, it’s an uphill battle to even get started on a concept.

You can build just about any app you can imagine with App Inventor. Often people begin by building games like WhackAMole or games that let you draw funny pictures on your friend’s faces. You can even make use of the phone’s sensors to move a ball through a maze based on tilting the phone.

But app building is not limited to simple games. You can also build apps that inform and educate. You can create a quiz app to help you and your classmates study for a test. With Android’s text-to-speech capabilities, you can even have the phone ask the questions aloud.

To use App Inventor, you do not need to be a developer. App Inventor requires NO programming knowledge. This is because instead of writing code, you visually design the way the app looks and use blocks to specify the app’s behavior.

Via Google Labs, App Inventor for Android allows easy access to the GPS, desktop, SMS and web portions for even the non-programmer. The inevitable fart or banner app that announces your name from across the room will pop-up, but this is a very quick way to start out programming and overcome the hurdles of learning Android from scratch.

Based on Java and able to connect to your Android phone, this looks like an impressive way to start out.

[ Links: Google Labs App Inventor ]

Being a college student usually means that your book expenses were more than your food expenses… which is not exactly fun at all. Well, Questia plans on making learning a bit more inexpensive and modern with their Apple iPhone and iPod Touch app.

The application, called Questia Library, provides mobile access to the full text of 74,000 books and over 2 million journal, magazine, and newspaper articles. The collection consists mostly of copyrighted works and is selected and organized by professional librarians to facilitate academic research in the humanities and social sciences.

“The research process is becoming increasingly mobile,” said Tim Harris, President and CEO of Questia. “Questia Library enables students and other researchers who are on the move to search, browse, skim, and read a large and valuable collection for the same price they might pay for a single ebook. Questia Library delivers amazing resources all in the palm of your hand.”

The application makes browsing for research purposes easier than ever, allowing users to quickly navigate Questia’s subject category schema and drill down to one of 6,700 research topic pages, such as psychology of war or magical realism, where they can view the top librarian-recommended books and articles for that topic.

24/7 access to just about every book!? I could have definitely used this while I was at the University of Colorado at Boulder – that’s Norlin Library above in the picture by the way.

The price of the app is 99¢ via the Apple iTunes Music Store and gives users permanent access to 5,000 public domain books and 1 week of access to every publication in Questia Library. After one week, users may purchase additional access to the full library through iTunes on a non-recurring basis and most books are quite inexpensive for purchase, while many are free public domain books.

Think I can pass for a freshman?

[ Questia ] [ Questia Library Plus ]