Maybe it's because I'm a sore loser but I now think that the ADC is flawed - particularly for individual developers out there like me.
Say if you come up with a killer-idea - should you submit it or not? Unless you win something - there is no up-side (apart from learning a skill that no-one wants yet). The down-side however is huge in that you'll be letting your idea out of the bag. It looks like the competition has been so successful that unless your idea is amazing you won't stand a chance of winning. Don't assume that 'potential' is enough and getting individuals to compete against huge teams in India (just a guess) doesn't help. Now - I doubt that Google would steal your idea directly - but I'm much less trusting of the OHA. Also - say if Google/OHA/employees just happen to be working on a similar idea but you came up with a really cool spin on it - would they 'borrow' your idea or not. I reckon it might be just too tempting. And as an individual could you really challenge this or compete? If you did submit a cool idea and failed to win - whatever you do - don't click the box allowing the OHA members to contact you for a start. Chances are that unless your idea was short-listed - probably only one or two OHA members would have seen your idea so far. If you click that box - guess how many get to see it then!? Why did Google do the ADC in the first place tho? Firstly - it's because it's a cool idea (I reckon google get swayed by this the most). It's also cheap marketing, builds up a community around Android, gets developers to work on Android instead of iPhone and gets them to 'beta- test' their API for free. There's also a slim chance that it might discover 'the killer-app' too (everyone knows that mobiles must be able to do more than just play games and mp3). Sadly - I reckon many developers will be put off with bothering with the 2nd round now tho. I'm sure that after spending the effort to learn Android quite a few will stick with it - but if you forget about the competition - maybe the iPhone-SDK begins to look pretty tempting. What can Google do to fix the 2nd round? I reckon they could easily try to re-balance the competition in favour of individuals instead. With $5M for the 2nd round - how do you think this should be split? I reckon do 5 top prizes ($500,000) and 500 smaller prizes ($5,000) - only 1 phase. This may put off corporates since they would probably only get $5,000 which isn't enough. But individuals might be much more tempted - I know I would be! I've still got loads of ideas - really not sure if I should stick with Android or not now tho. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Challenge" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-challenge?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
