Its been a busy week for the Android Development team. On Thursday, it released the early details of its Android Market and positions itself as being the place for “open” application distribution. In explaining their unusual name choice, the Android Development team writes on their blog, “We chose the term “market” rather than “store” because we feel that developers should have an open and unobstructed environment to make their content available.” Hope our friends in Cupertino heard that one. To publish content in the Android Market, developers will only need to register as a merchant, upload and describe their content, and then publish it. Android users will then be able to find and install any uploaded content from their Android device. Love it or Hate it? Android users will be able to rate the content in a feedback system similar to Youtube. A beta version of the Market will ship on the first Android handsets and will, at a minimum, include support for free content. Sounds simple simply wonderful doesn’t it? Hit the jump for the winners!

Now on to the Apps, the Android Development team also announced Thursday the winners of their Android Developer Challenge I. Out of a field of 50 applications, ten were chosen to receive the top $275,000 prize and ten were chosen for the runner up $100,000 prize. Here is a short list of some of the winners:

• GoCart by Rylan Barnes. ($275,000 Prize) Scan a product’s barcode with your phone’s camera and view all the best prices online and at nearby, local stores.
• Locale by Carter Jernigan, Clare Bayley, Jasper Lin, Christina Wright. ($275,000 Prize) Locale is an advanced settings manager that automatically changes your phone’s settings based on conditions, such as location.
• Wertago byKelvin Cheung,Teresa Ko, Peter Ree, Robert Sarvis, Douglas Yeung. ($275,000 Prize) The mobile application nightlifers have been waiting for. Find the hottest parties in town and connect with friends and others all night long like the Big Blackberry Bold Party at Boy Genius’s October 2nd!
• Maverick by Virgil Dobjanschi. ($100,000 Prize) Maverick is a multimedia enabled, Google Talk compatible instant messenger and a Google Blogger publishing tool which runs on the Android Platform.
• ShareYourBoard by Mikhail Ksenzov. ($100,000 Prize) ShareYourBoard is an Android application for capturing, processing and sharing whiteboard data.
• Cooking Capsules by Mary Ann Cotter, Muthu Ramadoss. ($100,000 Prize) Inspiration for novices and chefs alike, Cooking Capsules puts a fresh, elegant and portable new way to cook in the palm of your hand.

We got some cool apps and an open concept store but where are the phones? The HTC Dream still remains elusive, with only a few FCC drawings, a crude demo video or two, an unconfirmed feature set, and some creative markups to confirm its existence. Come on Google, T-Mobile, and HTC, throw us a bone and get on with the phone already. We want to run these applications on more than an emulator.

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