Google stretches Scratch

Google and MIT Media Lab have collaborated on a “new generation of graphical programming blocks” called “Scratch Blocks”. The tool is based on the popular coding-for-kids tool “Scratch”, that has been downloaded about a squillion times and introduced kids galore to coding. Google says the new effort offers “horizontal grammar …

[paulf]

It's in my diary

About 4 years hence, just as Scratch is gaining real traction, is looking like a smart polished product, and has a dedicated but perhaps not quite critical mass user base, when Google gives 30 days notice that Scratch will be closed and users have 90 days to download their data or lose it.

I can't see any other end to this initiative unless they bundle it so that Apps developed with Scratch can only sling Ads from Google's Double Click...

[Spanners]

Re: It's in my diary

Google will have to buy it first. Scratch is from MIT.

That said, I agree with you. I have lost useful things from Google dropping them. You don't know a replacement for My Tracks do you?

[paulf]

Re: It's in my diary

Re: My Tracks. Unfortunately not. I used that when I had Android phones and it was a pretty good App. Since I moved inside the fruity walled garden I've been using Runkeeper. It's good enough for my purposes but I can't remember if it supports things like exporting routes to gpx files.

[Anonymous Coward]

Horizontal icon based grammar

> an icon-based grammar that’s optimized for small screens

Been done already - it's called APL.