No More Database Design or Web Programming

Consider adding “no more database design or web programming” to your list of New Year’s resolutions. At DEMO 2008, UC San Diego startup App2you announced that it is opening itself up to the general public – initially for free. With app2you’s patented algorithms, you can whip up a customized interactive Web application in minutes without touching a line of code or thinking a single database-driven thought.

App2you’s key innovations come from a series of patented algorithms that perform the database design and programming for you.

“Users simply specify page design and decide who should have access to what information using our JustSketch tool. Our algorithms do the rest,” says Yannis Papakonstantinou, app2you founder and computer science professor from UC San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering.

App2you is one of the 16 startup companies nurtured since 2002 by the William J. von Liebig Center for Entrepreneurism and Technology Advancement at UCSD’s Jacobs School of Engineering. The von Liebig Center – recently recognized for excellence by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the Max Planck Institute of Economics – awarded app2you critical seed funding through a competitive review process in 2006. The support enabled Papakonstantinou and his team of UCSD students to develop the technology to the point where they could attract the angel funding they needed to commercialize their algorithms.

Read the full release here.

UCSD at TechCrunch

App2You, a UCSD startup that spun out of the computer science department landed on the TechCrunch 40 list this week. I'm not suprised. Their Web 2.0 app is super cool. It lets you build a database driven Web site without doing any coding. I'm especially fond of this idea since I actually tried to learn all the client-server and Web coding necesseary to do this kind of thing -- back in 2001 -- right before the first Internet bubble burst. Anywhow, I wrote about App2You for the alumni magazine for UCSD's Jacobs School of Engineering. I will probably put up a story on the Jacobs site about them being named to the TechCrunch list...but you heard it here first!

By the way, if you check out the app2you site, the two guys who are on the front cover are actually two of the computer science students who helped UCSD computer science professor Yannis Papakonstantinou develop the core technology behind this company.