Google Puts $10m Bounty on Android Development

Google, as promised, put the Android SDK out in early access - along with a $10 million pot for the best apps

Nov. 19, 2007 05:00 PM

Google, as promised, put the Android SDK out in early access - along with a $10 million pot for the best apps written for its open Android mobile platform by third-party developers.

It said the platform would be open and it's going about proving it. It also needs the buzz - and a killer mobile app - for Android to hit a homerun.

The first $5 million will be paid out in $25,000 prizes for the continued development of the 50 most promising entries submitted between January 2 and March 3 2008 to the Android Developer Challenge I.

These 50 entries will then be winnowed down by the end of May to 20 finalists - 10 that get awards worth $275,000 each and another 10 that'll each get $100,000.

There'll also be another contest - Android Developer Challenge II - that starts after the first so-called Google phones become available in the second half of next year.

The judges will come from the members of the Android-backing Open Handset Alliance (IHA) that Google unveiled last week as well, it says, as technology and mobile experts from the industry in general.

Anybody can play this game - except for Google and IHA folk and developers who live in Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Sudan, and Myanmar (Burma) - because of US laws - or Italy or Quebec - because of cockamamie local restrictions.

Google says developers will retain intellectual property rights to their applications while granting Google a license to evaluate and test it for purposes of the contest as well as a license to display the application to promote the Android platform.

It suggest possible apps in:

· Social networking
· Media consumption, management, editing, or sharing, e.g., photos
· Productivity and collaboration such as email, IM, calendar, etc.
· Gaming
· News and information (weather, traffic, sports, stocks, etc.)
· Rethinking of traditional user interfaces
· Use of mash-up functionality
· Use of location based services
· Humanitarian benefits (monitoring and response for diseases, climate change, natural disasters, etc.)
· Applications in service of global economic development for the 3 billion people living on less than $2.00 per day

The SDK with its documentation, sample projects, development tools, emulator and libraries is at http://code.google.com/android/download.html.

Published Nov. 19, 2007— Reads 27,023 — Feedback 2
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About Maureen O'Gara
Maureen O'Gara the most read technology reporter for the past 20 years, is the Cloud Computing and Virtualization News Desk editor of SYS-CON Media. She is the publisher of famous "Billygrams" and the editor-in-chief of "Client/Server News" for more than a decade. One of the most respected technology reporters in the business, Maureen can be reached by email at maureen(at)sys-con.com or paperboy(at)g2news.com, and by phone at 516 759-7025. Twitter: @MaureenOGara

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Google Puts $10m Bounty on Android Development

mobile TV wrote: I am working on a business advisory group made up of broadcasting companies and networks. Samsung, LG and Thompson have developed ways to use existing broadcast spectrum and deliver over the air television to mobile devices (moving 100 miles per hour). We're just getting started, but what you all are doing here with open source development has inspired us. In February 2009 many broadcasting stations will start sending live video content to mobile devices, but many in the group don't want to make it shovelware (as in simulcast the stuff we're doing already and leave it at that)... We want to activate our new channels and content with your great ideas... We need ad delivery solutions/ideas, measurement solutions/ideas, LBS solutions/ideas... We need utility apps (like programming interfaces), intent trigger apps (like turning on the tuner when it senses a keywor...

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