Google will give $10 million to the developers who build the best applications for Android, the open source platform Google designed for building mobile phones. Google says it hopes to spark innovation with the so-called Android Developer Challenge, announced today concurrently with the release of Android. The software development kit is now available for download on the Android site.

Google’s Android OS has been making consistent progress in the smartphone world. If you’re anything like me, you may have been curious about this mobile OS but not willing to spend much on a phone. Fortunately, the LiveAndroid project on Google Code provides a bootable LiveCD image that can be run on your home computer.

As expected Google released their Android Software Development Kit (SDK) today. It provides all of the tools needed to start creating applications that run on the next generation mobile operating system, and Google is getting their checkbooks out to help ensure that Android won’t be a flop…

«This guide explains how you can install the Google Android SDK 1.0 on an Ubuntu 8.04 desktop. With this stable release of the Android SDK, you can now develop applications for Android smartphones (like T-Mobile's G1) and offer them on the Android Market.

I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!»

A few days before the launch of Windows 7, Acer has released the first netbook to ship with the Google Android operating system. And a juicy tidbit has come out of an early review: Android comes with Mozilla Firefox for Web browsing, not Google’s own Chrome browser or the Android browser that comes on mobile phones.

If you are an Android developer, looking to root your Android phone, or just a blogger who wants to take screenshots of your latest Nexus One phone, you will need to install Android SDK in your computer. I know that it is kind of troublesome to download/install the SDK just to take screenshots in your phone, but luckily it can be done easily.

Android is maturing, both for developers and consumers. Will it dominate the mobile market? 2010 may bring the answer. Two years ago I began writing a book about writing applications for Android. Back then, most people had not heard of Android — in fact, unless you’re a phone-geek or a Linux fan, you may still not have heard of Android.

This in-depth, hands-on article introduces Android, Google's Linux/Java mobile phone SDK (software development kit). After a tour of Android's tools, documentation, and code samples, it suggests a path for further exploration and concludes with a simple applet showing the power and simplicity of the Android environment. Enjoy . . . !

Google has launched a new native development toolkit for Android that will make it possible for third-party Android application developers to use C and C++. Google has also released an Android scripting environment that supports Python and Lua.