Google lays out Android roadmap, devs scheduled to get more love

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Google lays out Android roadmap, devs scheduled to get more love

Google feels really badly about that several month-long stretch where it kept any and all updates to its Android SDK out of the public limelight, developers, honest, but it wants to make it up to you. It seems that

yesterday's 0.9 release, which represented the first official SDK available with a platform even remotely resembling what Google intends to release on retail devices this fall, was just the first in a string of goings-on leading up to the grand 1.0 launch in the coming months according to a new roadmap published on the Android site. To start, there'll be "additional Android 1.0 (pre) SDK releases made available, as necessary" in September, followed by the first 1.0-compatible release in the Q3 to Q4 timeframe (that's any time between now and the end of December, for you calendar-disadvantaged folk). Finally, the Android source will leak out in the fourth quarter along with the first "Android 1.0 devices" -- pay special attention to the plural "devices" there -- and an announcement about

Android Developer Challenge II. It gives us a warm fuzzy to see that Google's interested in keeping its devs engaged with these contests on an ongoing basis, because let's be honest: "prize money" has a much nicer ring to it than "VC money" ever will.

Nice to see that google has a solid plan for Android, and that it's challenging developers.

Google had been doing this right the entire time. I'm really excited to see the capabilities of this OS once it's released.

Here's a list of the 50 Apps that were chosen in the Android Developer Challenge. They won $25k each and in the next round, 10 will get $275k and 10 will get $100k....pretty awesome if you ask me. Here's the list and there's also a slide show with in on each of them here:

http://code.google.com/android/images/adc1r1_deck.pdf

• AndroidScan - Jeffrey Sharkey
• Beetaun - Sergey Gritsyuk and Dmitri Shipilov
• BioWallet - Jose Luis Huertas Fernandez
• BreadCrumbz - Amos Yoffe
• CallACab - Konrad Huebner and Henning Boeger
• City Slikkers - PoroCity Media and Virtual Logic Systems
• Commandro - Alex Pisarev, Andrey Tapekha
• Cooking Capsules - Mary Ann Cotter and Muthuselvam Ramadoss
• Diggin - Daniel Johansson, Aramis Waernbaum, Andreas Hedin
• Dyno - Virachat Boondharigaputra
• e-ventr - Michael Zitzelsberger
• Eco2go - Taneem Talukdar, Gary Pong, Jeff Kao and Robert Lam
• Em-Radar - Jack Kwok
• fingerprint - Robert Mickle
• FreeFamilyWatch - Navee Technologies LLC
• goCart - Rylan Barnes
• GolfPlay - Inizziativa Networks
• gWalk - Prof. Dr.-Ing. Klaus ten Hagen, Christian Klinger, Marko Modsching, Rene Scholze
• HandWx - Weathertop Consulting LLC
• IMEasy - Yan Shi
• Jigsaw - Mikhail Ksenzov
• JOYity - Zelfi AG
• LifeAware - Gregory Moore, Aaron L. Obrien, Jawad Akhtar
• Locale - Clare Bayley, Christina Wright, Jasper Lin, Carter Jernigan
• LReady Emergency Manager - Chris Hulls, Dilpreet Singh, Luis Carvalho, Phuong Nguyen
• Marvin - Pontier Laurent
• Mobeedo - Sengaro GmbH
• Multiple Facets Instant Messenger - Virgil Dobjanschi
• MyCloset - Mamoru Tokashiki
• PedNav - RouteMe2 Technologies Inc.
• Phonebook 2.0 - Voxmobili
• PicSay - Eric Wijngaard
• PiggyBack - Christophe Petit and Sebastien Petit
• Pocket Journey - Anthony Stevens and Rosie Pongracz
• Rayfarla - Stephen Oldmeadow
• Safety Net - Michael DeJadon
• SocialMonster - Ben Siu-Lung Hui and Tommy Ng
• SplashPlay
• Sustain- Keeping Your Social Network Alive - Niraj Swami
• SynchroSpot - Shaun Terry
• Talkplay - Sung Suh Park
• Teradesk - José Augusto Athayde Ferrarini
• The Weather Channel for Android - The Weather Channel Interactive Inc.
• TuneWiki - TuneWiki Inc.
• Wikitude-the Mobile Travel Guide - Philipp Breuss
• Writing Pad - ShapeWriter Inc

Wow, just wow. Nearly all of the applications look amazing. It's making me even more excited about Android.

Yeah, I was really pumped looking through that list. I'm going to start adding them to Huddler ASAP and we'll see about getting some buzz going around them here. On our Green site, we do user-generated interviews. I'll reach out to some app. developers and see if they're willing to do one.

I managed to get quite a few of the Android Apps in the product database here:

http://mobile.huddler.com/products/category/android-applications

After spending some time looking at each of the 50 winners I must say they're not ALL worth the $25k prize, but there are definitely some talented and creative people out there. Exciting stuff. I'll try to get some developers on site ASAP.