Jenneth Orantia16 May 2008, 12:00 AM
Google's massive competition for developers to create apps for its new Android mobile phone OS is bearing some very interesting fruit.
Results for the first round of Google's $10 million-dollar are in, and 50 entrants have walked away with $25,000 each to build their applications. Two themes stood out in the list of winners: location-based services and social networking — many combined both into the one program. There was also a heavy emphasis on end user software — of the 46 applications announced (four of them were kept secret at the request of the developers), only two of them had a productivity/business angle.
The next (and final) round is where the real money is: ten runners-up will win $100,000 and the ten winning developers will pocket a cool $275,000 each. Our money is on the following applications:
AndroidScan: a shopping assistant that compares prices across different stores when you scan the product’s barcode with the phone’s camera. It also presents reviews from Amazon and lets you play sample tracks for CDs.
Diggin: a music player that takes a leaf out of the iPhone's book by emphasising album art as a way to navigate through your music collection, only it goes a step further by letting you design your own record crates.
Locale: an intelligent profile manager that uses GPS to automatically change your phone’s settings (like setting the ringer on mute) when you're at certain locations.
Phonebook 2.0: an interactive next-gen address book that lets you communicate and keep in touch with friends using existing social networks, instant messaging and SMS
SplashPlay: think Guitar Hero, only without the gaming and using your own guitar. A light panel attaches to the guitar and flashes in tune with tutorials on the phone, both of which are wirelessly connected over Bluetooth.
TuneWiki: a music player that streams lyrics in sync with the song that’s currently playing. It also lets you what you're listening to with other people in real-time.
Wikitude: unlike other location-based travel guides that rely on registered users to upload information, this one uses freely-available Wikipedia content, letting you search for information using your current location.