Left Brain Media has developed an iOS app using LiveCode that is so good I just have to share it with you.

HIV and Your Heart was co-developed by the American Heart Association and the American Academy of HIV Medicine.  “HIV and Your Heart exists to help people living with HIV make positive changes in life for better heart health and overall wellness” they say.  

Having HIV increases your risk for heart disease.  This informative app has over 90 minutes of positive, uplifting videos, from personal stories to advice from leading physicians, to help those living with HIV enjoy a long and healthy life.  You can interact with the app’s planning tool to set wellness goals and the built in tracking tool lets you follow the steps you need to take to reach those goals.

One of my favourite features of the app is how the user can chose to share the information via facebook, twitter or youtube and engage with others interested in or affected by HIV/AIDS.  Alternatively, the app has a full suite of confidentiality features; the desktop icon is just labelled ‘Your Heart’ and users can password protect the information if the wish to.

“This is a perfect example of how mobile apps are becoming part of everyday life.” says LiveCode Product Manager, Benjamin Beaumont.  

Mobile computing is one of the best ways for communities to share experiences, knowledge and ideas; the American Heart Association and the American Academy for HIV Medicine have done a brilliant job doing just that with this wonderfully instructive and interactive app.  LiveCode are proud of the small part we have played in its development.

HIV and Your Heart is a free app available to download from iTunes now.   

Do you have a made with LiveCode app you’re proud of?  Send it to us so that we can blog about it!  

LiveCode revolutionized development with its easy to use English-like language and rapid, compile-free workflow. Now one of RunRev’s long-standing customers is bringing that same fast, easy and effective approach to how you communicate online. 

Since 2003 Blue Mango Learning Systems have used LiveCode to build great visual communication tools, which in turn help their clients create and deliver fantastic documentation. (The RunRev lessons portal, for example, is built using Blue Mango’s flagship product ScreenSteps and ScreenSteps Live and our customers have always been extremely happy with its performance.)

But effective visual communication is not just for documentation.  Using pictures in your daily communications means you spend less time explaining things.  Clarify is Blue Mango’s product that saves you time by organizing, clarifying and focusing your communications.

How Clarify Works

Capture images

Capture screenshots, import graphics or add photos. Capture multiple images to create clear communications.

Turn them into communications

Add annotations and text to your images.  

Annotations include:

– Arrows

– Rectangles

– Oval

– Highlight

– Sequence tools

– Text annotations

– Blur

Share online or via email

It is easy to share your communications online via clarify-it.com (a free sharing service offered by Blue Mango), Dropbox, Evernote, or by email.

Built with LiveCode

We are really proud that Clarify was built using LiveCode.  Both RunRev and Blue Mango share a philosophy.  Blue Mango tells us that to communicate well we must:

– Be organized
– Be brief
– Be clear

Well, the same has always been true for programming and developing apps.

Stay Organized

LiveCode’s clear process of ‘cards’ and ‘stacks’ keeps your programming organized and structured. 

Learn more about Cards and Stacks here

Be Brief

Supercharge your workflow. Make changes in real time. With LiveCode your application is always running, so any changes you make are seen live. This lets you create Apps and adapt to changing requirements in record time.

                                           The Traditional Development Cycle. With each debugging
                                           you need to run the cycle again – slowing down your                                                                                                          development. 

                                           With LiveCode’s compile free cycle your chnages happen
                                           in real time.  No more waiting, no more delays. 

Be Clear

Writing in LiveCode is not like using other languages.  We use an English-like programming language so unlike other tools there is no arcane symbols, no difficult short hand, no complex syntax.

Your code is readable and understandable – even months after you’re written it.

Why choose LiveCode?

I asked Trevor DeVore, Clarify Developer and Blue Mango Director of Technology, why LiveCode was the perfect tool to use when developing programmes of this kind.  The reason, he told me, is becuase LiveCode is so versatile.

“Clarify has been released for both Mac and Windows. I need to be able to share as much code as possible between the two platforms if I’m going to be able to provide a quality product for our customers at release as well as going forward. Being able to use 98% of the code on both platforms without modification makes this feasible.

In addition, the ability to instantly test Clarify on Mac and Windows during development without any need to compile allows me to quickly iterate over features and fix bugs.”

– Trevor DeVore, Blue Mango Learning Systems

Clarify is available now for purchase on the Mac App Store.  Check out this great LiveCode-built app!    

There’s a hot discussion taking place about how to get young students interested in programming.  Not just interested, but loving it!  Teachers and administrators have been battling this challenge for years, but the fact is that engaging students early in technical areas such as Computer Studies is difficult to impossible, beyond perhaps one or two engineering obsessed students in the school.

However, with the number of IT related jobs growing by the thousands every year, and the tremendous need for mobile app developers for the long term, it is more important than ever to make Computer Studies as fundamental in K-12 curriculum as math, language, or science.  While it may sound impossible to get children to grasp the relevance of web and desktop development early on, the abundance of mobile apps and games have created new opportunities for educators.

Children are drawing, playing games, and watching videos on their parents’ mobile phones before learning their ABCs.  They begin to show interest in tinkering with devices in grade school. (Remember being the only one in your family who could program the TV remote when you were a kid?)  Many students want to create, build and fix anything they can get their hands on, but immediate gratification and relevance to their lives are critical factors for getting and keeping them engaged.  And a little fun thrown in helps a bunch.

Students as young as 10 are grasping the fundamentals of technology development, and teaching these young tinkerers to create simple games and mobile apps is helping breath new life into Computer Science curriculum.  At the core of much of this newfound passion for programming is LiveCode.  The easy to use platform makes it simple for educators to learn the language, and, for the first time, students just get it!

In response to the growing success of LiveCode in education, we have created a RunRev Education Microsite.  The site offers case studies, course materials for all grade levels, teacher training materials, forums and support, and free trials – everything educators needs to get started with LiveCode.

Take a look at Gracemount High School’s informative white paper and please share your own stories as well!

Language learning specialists EuroTalk are experts in their field with 20 years of publishing experience and over 10 million customers.  EuroTalk uses LiveCode during the authoring process for many of their titles, and has been working for a number of years in Malawi together with the Scottish Government looking at different solutions for delivering education to primary schools. 

These are rural schools with no electricity and very large class sizes, and often the teachers have very few resources.  All classes at standard 1 and 2 have at least 250 children and this particularly school we’re blogging about has 5000 children.  Some nearby primary schools have 18 to 20 thousand children.

A LiveCode created app, the Chichewa Learning App has been a great help to the children and provides the key words needed and a fast, scientific way of remembering them.  Described by users as:

“Fun intelligent interactive learning games.  Worth the money.”

“Unlike many other apps, this one makes learning fun and doesn’t get boring.” 

HOW IT WORKS

This interactive product is the result of extensive research into how the brain learns fastest.  It uses:

– Images: to stimulate both halves of the brains, visual as well as logical;

– Fun quizzes: because we remember best what we’re interested in;

– Speech, recording and playback: to perfect your accent by comparing with native speakers;

– A point scoring system: that gives feedback on progress and rewards success.

Here are a few pictures of the children who don’t speak much English but took to the Chichewa Learning App almost instantly.   

And this girl typed her name into the device and was so proud to see it on the unit menu.

 “If we can use tools like LiveCode to 
 develop and iterate quickly, and use 
 handheld devices to deliver, I think 
 we are on the verge of a revolution in 
 terms of delivering education.”

Read on to find out more about EuroTalk and their successful Maths app for children ages 3 – 5!