I literally came home from a podcast interview and my husband said, "Debbie, I've built three websites." I said, "What?" And he said, "Yes, I've built three websites." And I said, "I heard you, but what?"
My husband is not in tech. He has never cared about anything I do in tech. He does not know how to build anything. He works in the public sector and is rarely on the computer. And yet, he was able to build three websites in 10 minutes. He watched a video for 10 minutes and just went for it. I knew I had to tell the world about this.
How he did it
He went to gemini.google.com. That's it. This is free. He paid absolutely zero money. I do have a pro account, but he has a free account and can just build websites. Seriously, you've got to check it out.
When you open Gemini, you'll see a bunch of options like create image, create music, create video, write anything, help me learn. There's a lot you can play around with. But there are a couple of other things that I find are a little bit hidden. If you click into the options, you'll see Canvas, deep research, guided learning, and more.
Canvas is the one we want. Open a canvas, pick the fast model (totally fine for this), and you're ready to go.
Building a Batman game for toddlers
After my husband built his three websites, the next day he started building games for our kids. I wanted to show you what that looks like so I typed in "build a Batman game for toddlers." That's it. A simple prompt.
The first thing that pops up is all this code. Don't be scared by that. As my husband said, "I watched it spit out all the code that you normally write by hand." I normally write this code by hand. That's the insane thing.
Once the code finishes generating, it jumps into preview mode. And there it was. A Batman city helper game where you move Batman to collect stars. I was just moving with the trackpad and it worked. It was actually really simple for toddlers to play.
Just use your imagination
The cool thing is you just have to have an imagination and think about how to make it better. I typed "can you add sound?" and Gemini added a cheerful ping whenever Batman catches a star or a balloon. I could hear the little sound effects and honestly it was amazing.
You can even select a specific area of the preview, drag a box over it, and ask Gemini to make changes right there. I dragged over the top area and said "can you add the person's name here?" You don't even have to specify "the right hand corner" or anything. Just drag and ask. It figured it out.
Building multiple things at the same time
Here's something people don't even know about. While one thing is generating, you can open a new canvas and start building something else. I had the Batman game going and at the same time asked it to create a website for a circus act.
One line. That's all I typed. And out came a full circus website. "A night of pure magic." It looked incredible. And I could iterate over it, add the actual address, YouTube links, whatever I wanted.
Then I created some games for learning numbers for toddlers. I used to be a school teacher. I used to have to prep and create all this stuff in my free time. And now I can just create resources on the fly.
The number learning game blew my mind
The toddler number game it created was called "Number Fun" with a bubble pop game. It actually spoke out loud and said "pop the bubbles in order, start with one." You go one, two, three. I tried doing it wrong on purpose and it said "find number four." It had a home button where you could click on count items and count fruits. One, two, three, four. It had sound you could turn on and off.
This is what kids want. This is the kind of interactive learning material that used to take ages to build. And I made it with one prompt.
Sharing your creations
You've got access to the code if you know how to code and want to tweak things yourself. But the really cool thing is the share button. You can copy the content, share it with someone, or just copy a link. My husband was sharing things with me saying "here's a website I've started, can you help me improve it?"
You can also go to previous versions and see changes saved. And there's an option to add Gemini features, which adds AI stuff to your creation. Great for writing stories. We actually created a book that reads the story to you. I can't even remember all the things we created in just a couple of minutes.
The one thing that is missing is there's no quick and easy deploy button. You can share a link and people can see it, which is kind of like it's deployed but not really deployed. It's a bit weird. But for getting a design together and having someone help you with the deployment part later? It works.
The only limit is your imagination
Whether you're creating games, building your own book, making material for teaching, or putting together a website and having someone help you with the deploy part, you're in control.
This is free. You might hit some limits if you keep going nonstop, and then you can pay for more. But to try it out, it costs nothing. Just go to gemini.google.com and start building.
I encourage you all to play around with this. Think about the possibilities. The technical barrier is gone. The only problem now is your imagination. So start being creative and just start imagining things.
Have fun building.
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