Security, gaming apps win Android Developers Challenge

Three developers made it past thousands of community voters and a panel of judges Monday to emerge as the winners of Google's second Android Developer Challenge (ADC2).

The top overall prizes went to SweetDreams, What the Doodle, and WaveSecure. These winners took home between $125,000 and $250,000 for their efforts. Smaller cash prizes were awarded to the top-three applications in each of 10 categories, which included media, entertainment, education, and travel.

SweetDreams is a lifestyle application that lets users sleep comfortably while knowing their handsets will block unwanted calls in the middle of the night but still sound the alarm clock at the designated time. You also can set a downtime for your handset, and disable Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and other battery draining items.

What the Doodle is a multiplayer game that finds players drawing out pictures for phrases while others guess the answer. The real-time game includes Free-For-All and team modes, global leaderboard, and voice recognition.

WaveSecure is a security app that gives users peace of mind in the event of a lost or stolen phone. Similar to Motorola's MotoBlur interface, customers can track the location of their phone, lock out prying eyes, and remotely wipe their data. The backup feature allows for full restoration should the user recover the lost phone or purchase a new device.

The developers who didn't win money still stand a chance of gaining some added visibility. T-Mobile, which currently offers the most Android phones of any U.S. carrier, served as a judge. The carrier's "AppPack" features a hand-picked group of apps that is pushed to new Android users. Landing on this or a similar list might be more than some developers could have hoped for.