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Google's Android for phones nearing release
Android Developer Challenge
To kick-start interest in creating programs for Android, Google announced it would award a total of $10 million dollars to the top application developers in the Android Developer Challenge. The winners of the first phase of the challenge received awards ranging from $25,000 to $275,000.
The top 20 teams from the first phase of the Android Developer Challenge were announced Aug. 29.
Many of the winning programs were clever, practical, location-based services which use a combination of Web content and positioning information from a device's GPS radio.
The winning developers shared something else in common: They said their projects couldn't have been created on any other mobile platform, but were made possible because of Android’s open development system.
One of the winning programs, GoCart, from Dallas, Texas-based developer Big in Japan, is a personal shopping assistant. Once a product's barcode is scanned using the built-in camera in an Android device, the best prices from online and nearby merchants are retrieved.
Big in Japan also markets products for the iPhone, but GoCart was only possible for Android, said a company spokesman.
“We would like have liked to develop GoCart for the iPhone's 4 million active phones,” said Alexander Muse, chairman of Big in Japan. “But since (the Apple) operating system is closed, we still can't access various capabilities. The open source and process behind Android enabled us to create a fully functional application prior to testing on a real device. Completely amazing in our book.”
A range of programs
Another winning program, Locale, started as an MIT student project earlier this year, manages and changes settings, like volume, based on location. An Android device running Locale might automatically mute all sounds while close to work, and turn on the ringer at home.
“Android distinguishes itself by fostering an open environment,” said Locale team member Carter Jernigan. “This forges a symbiotic relationship between Android and developers. Developers rely on the open nature of Android to make their applications possible, while Android's success with consumers will in part rely on the ingenuity of third-party developers to create applications, like Locale, that aren't possible on other platforms."
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the developers of Life360, another winning program, saw the need for a way to help families become prepared for and stay connected during emergencies.
The Life360 program lets users to create a single subscription to manage family GPS tracking, important document warehousing and emergency communication.
“The biggest advantage we get from Android is its always-on background network connectivity,” said Chris Nulls, Life360’s co-founder and CEO. “This is allowing us to build a truly real-time alerting and tracking system, which would simply be impossible using the iPhone.”
Cooking Capsules, another winning program that is the brainchild of CEO and San Franciscan Mary Ann Cotter, is the product of an international crew of developers from across Europe and Asia.
Following the motto “watch, shop and make,” Cooking Capsules presents a short video stream of a cooking show, identifies the nearest markets for the ingredients with GPS-enabled mapping and includes an ingredient checklist and recipe.
In a post on her blog, Cotter shared her view of Android with a zeal typical of the platform's developers: “Android is a volcano. Not the kind that erupts suddenly like fireworks, but the kind that slowly releases molten lava that changes the entire landscape in such an unpredictable yet enduring way that no one realizes the impact until they look back at a snapshot from a few months or a year back to find the old way unrecognizable.”
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