The winners of the first round of the Android Developer Challenge have been announced. Fifty developers will receive $25,000 each to build out their Android mobile phone apps. Only 46 were announced (the other four prefer to remain stealth—wimps). From this list, ten will receive another $100,000 each, and another ten will receive $250,000 each. The Phandroid blog gives a rundown of what each app does. Here are ten that caught my eye, with the rest of the list below. Excerpt:
- AndroidScan - Use your phone to scan a barcode, get pricing information from dozens of stores, product reviews and more. Never make a bad purchase again! (by Jeffrey Sharkey)
- BioWallet - A biometric authentication system for Android. This application features iris recognition and can act as a password safe and provide single sign-on for other Android apps. Jose Luis Huertas Fernandez
- City Slikkers - a Pervasive Game (alternatively Location Based Game) which takes place in the real-existing city. It is designed to connect a large number of players through-out the world and change the way the surroundings are seen. The central idea behind the concept is to give people the opportunity to symbolically interfere with the everyday urban environment and come into contact with previously unknown people. By PoroCity Media and Virtual Logic Systems.
- Cooking Capsules -Simply “watch” a very short cooking show, “shop” with the grocery list, and “make” using the handy step-by-step recipe directions. If you are out of your usual neighborhood you can use the ‘find nearest market’ gps feature. If your friend is stopping at the market, simply hit the ’send to friend’ button to text your list to them. By Mary Ann Cotter and Muthuselvam Ramadoss
- GolfPlay - give support to all the real time necessities of a golf player during a game, using GPS location and an online querying site where it is possible to access to their game statistics, tournament creation and a social network to exchange impressions with other users about the sport that links them: golf. By Inizziativa Networks
- Locale - Locale is one of 7 Android applications submitted by MIT students. It enables you to set up location- and time-based profiles for your phone, so you can make it shut up when you’re at work, forward calls to your landline when you’re at home. Clare Bayley, Christina Wright, Jasper Lin, Carter Jernigan.
- SplashPlay - SplashPlay offers the next generation in musical tuition and learning to play the guitar just got a whole lot easier. Simply attach the pod and light panel to your guitar and start strumming to your favourite songs in minutes. Songs are sent to the pod from a mobile phone or computer using a USB or Bluetooth connection, giving total portability. Other features include a guitar tuner, guitar metronome and a hands free, Bluetooth foot pedal. The product will provide an easy, portable and fun method of learning music.
- TuneWiki - Our goal is to have the lyrics always on, always available, always synchronized to music - on any device that can play music back and connect to the internet. By TuneWiki Inc.
- Wikitude-the Mobile Travel Guide - Find points of interest based on your current location. By Philipp Breuss.
- PedNav - an application that helps you plan your activities efficiently when moving around and interacting with an urban environment. Like a good personal assistant, PedNav first inquires about your general plans for the day. By RouteMe2 Technologies Inc.
See our previous coverage of TuneWiki, Locale and other worthy Android apps. Below are the other 36 named finalists (which ones will make it to the next round?):
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Wow this is great motivation to get a base set of apps on the platform. Lessen to Apple: openness rules these days when it comes to your device / system as a platform - the world doesn’t wait till you decide to open the gates so that people can work for you.
Peter
do you follow me on http://twitter.com/peterurban
yeah openness is gaining a momentum today that I never thought it would.
And the amazing part is all of the applications are so unique…vow where do they get these new ideas.
Kids Summer Club NJ
You’ve got a typo where it talkes about 10 will get another $100,000. Replace “4100,000″ with “$100,000″
Well done everyone. It is great to see that Google is giving something back to the developers!!
Great, so now we just need phones that will run them…
Hi Eric,
Could you please correct our url in the link posted - thx! Rosie
http://www.pocketjourney.com
Android Scan looks great. This could be the killer app for camera phones. I can’t wait to scan wine bottles for reviews / better prices.
Great! More junk running on my phone! Always on lyrics! Learning to play the guitar on my phone! What’s next online chess??? On phone spell check?? Maybe they could give me a clock that changes as I cross time zones!
Holy cow! I’m sure Verizon is shaking in their boots over this!!
If you have a killer idea, would you share it with the world in ADC? I’m not surprised to find more hobbyists selected than companies. Good job on the apps though! Now develop these for S60 phones, LiMo phones, iphone, Microsoft Mobile….
I seem to recall a geolocation/GPS based ‘find where your employee is’, app.
Was that just an MIT experiment or is there a competitor out there with something like that?
I’m looking for a mobile web app developer. If you are one or know of one please email me, justin@singlefinmedia.com.
Thx.
If anyone’s interested, my application didn’t make the cut but I think it will end up being a huge hit on the Android platform. It is a media system (specifically a music player) that lets you access your collection over the wireless data connection. It’s very efficient, synchronizing many things passively and preempting the user’s behaviour where possible to improve the experience.
Source is also available, unlike many of the apps which actually won, so there’s some real meat developers can dig into already.
Anyway, check it out: http://five.googlecode.com
I really liked the 1st app…Scan …its amazing !!
We submitted an intelligent distributed communications framework for Android, Windows and Symbian (CDC) apps to socialize and discovery each other. It works via ad hoc peer-to-peer and peer-to-group communities based on the Voyager Edge framework. No, we didn’t win. But is interop with Windows, et al what Google wants?
@ Mogilny “Good job on the apps though! Now develop these for S60 phones, LiMo phones, iphone, Microsoft Mobile…. ”
Our submission would have helped Android and even Windows & Symbian developers to avoid having to do this. But I wonder if true universal interop is Gogole’s goal. We know at least some of the OHA (handset manufacturers) want to reduce fragmentation and we’ve talked to several big names in this area. Does Google truley want open interop with competing OSs?
Thoughts?
Wow! that’s a pretty interesting list of apps. I guess LBS based applications top the list. This goes on to prove that Google is pretty serious about LBS applications. Iam surprised not to see any MVoIP/SMS/MMS based applications.
Cheers,
omfut
Here’s our application which was in the top 100:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3fEpeXpezw
@Vicky Google never promised open interop with competing OSs. OHA only has one OS, android. Another way of viewing “reduce fragmentation” is uniform domination. Android is free, so no money there. But, if every phone runs on android, the information google can gather is going to be MONEY. Interop with competing OSs, ha, that’s funny.
PedNav? What a horrible name… makes it sound like an app to locate children near you.
AndroidGuys has more of an in-depth look at each of the applications. Plus their site appears to be updated more often.
http://www.AndroidGuys.com
did i miss one, but where is the finalist that phones home or helps you locate a lost or stolen device? i think an application like http://lostandroid.com should have been a shoe-in.
@ Mogilny— Universal interop funny? It’s a reality. Case in point, a couple of the 50 winners have already responded wanting to know more about our entry (we submitted a single framework for apps demonstrated via a chat demo using Android, Java SE, and .NET clients), in addition to the budding relationships we already have with handset providers. Some validation indeed!
I was taking the idea of an open and free platform a step further. Google has made a lot of PR claims about wanting true open innovation. And what about their attempt to open up the FCC spectrum for “the good of consumers/developers”? I love Google for many reasons, but as you said, Google is here to make money. But your assumption is that EVERY phone will run Android eventually, or even a significant subset will. Unless Windows goes away (HA!) and Nokia folds or switches their platform (yeah, right), this will simply never be, not in the next decade.
Google’s dream is to get beyond the internet and deliver ads to the desktop directly and to non-internet devices (kiosks, grocery stores, cars, set top boxes). They’ve already hit gas pumps and newspapers for example. They will never do this via uniform domination, but only do this by solving interop, especially with embedded devices.
I got often become along School chunk beech log.