Perth man wins $120,000 in Google competition

A musician from Perth has been handed $120,000 from internet giant Google for reaching the finals in a developer’s challenge for the group’s new G1 smartphone.

A musician from Perth has been handed $120,000 from internet giant Google for reaching the finals in a developer’s challenge for the group’s new G1 smartphone.

Steve Oldmeadow won the prize for his application “Rayfarla,” which he entered into the Android Developer Challenge. The program is a musical application that allows users to mix and match virtual instruments, take part in a rhythm arcade game and create music.

Other applications which received grants included “GoCart”, which allows a user to take a picture of a product’s barcode, while the application then gathers the best prices for that product at different stores online.

“ShareYourBoard” received a $100,000 grant. It is an application that captures, processes and shares whiteboard data.

Oldmeadow plans to release the application’s source code to the application developer community.

The Android software, which powers the new G1 phone, is a free open-source operating system developed by Android, a software company acquired by Google in 2005.

Like Apple’s iPhone, Android will run applications that allows users to customise their phone with applications, most of which are used for entertainment and novelty purposes.

Applications for smartphones have proven to be money-makers, with Apple’s online Application Store bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But unlike the iPhone, Google plans to use open-source codes to allow G1 users to create their own applications. But while many of the programs will be free, it says a pricing model will be adapted for the some higher-level applications after next month’s launch.

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