It seemed such a straightforward idea (even if Scoble disliked it): launch a new mobile platform based on an historically fan-fuelled OS, emphasise the “phone of the people” credentials and then offer a sizable financial reward for developing new applications for it all.  But it seems that Google’s $10m moneybox might have had the opposite effect; rather than encourage new ideas, the thought of helping somebody else win a share of the fund has made expert programmers clam up:

“The fact there is close to $300,000 on the line for winning projects is making most people think twice about sharing stuff with the community. PHP-like documentation with associated user contributed code would make developing on the Android platform a dream — unfortunately there is no such thing. Unless you are an experienced Java programmer with the skills to interpret the provided documentation without extra code to look at, there is a good chance you are out of luck” Garett Rogers, ZDNet

Of course, the big, established developers are busy coding away and excitedly announcing their forthcoming wares: Artificial Life, Inc. was today the latest to throw their hat into the Android ring, citing the platform’s open-source design as a key consideration for their investment:

“The emergence of mobile devices with a more open architecture and robust feature set makes our lives easier by giving us the freedom to create games with fewer limitations imposed by the specific devices while, at the same time, reducing production overhead” Eberhard Schoneburg, CEO, Artificial Life, Inc.

Those are the exact same reasons that casual coders might see Android as an excellent opportunity to put the fruits of their skills into a broad ecosystem, but without the peer support things are off to a slow start. 

If you’re looking for help coding, then the Android Community might be able to assist - signing up is free.