The 10 best Google Android applications

Late last year, Google announced that it would give $10 million worth in prizes to software development companies to develop innovative and useful applications for their open source mobile Android platform.  

Roughly nine months later, Google has announced the winners, and the applications it has selected help users do everything from calling their nearest taxi cabs to comparing sale prices at different stores to calculating their carbon footprint.

Take a look at some screen grabs from the apps in this slideshow

cab4me

Utilizing Android's Google Maps application, cab4me lets users call a cab to their location with a single click. By using GPS capabilities to locate not only the user's current location, but also the location of the nearest cab company, the application can initiate a call to the cab company with a mere click on the map. The application was developed by Konrad Huebner and Henning Boerger.

Locale

Ever get embarrassed at a company meeting when your cell phone unexpectedly goes off? With Locale, you can make sure  your device knows to switch to vibrate mode the minute you step into your office. With Android's GPS capabilities, Locale adjusts your phone's settings to wherever you're located. Thus, your phone will forward calls to different numbers based on whether you're at work or home, or will send out a status message on Twitter letting people know where you're located. This application was developed by Carter Jernigan, Clare Bayley, Jasper Lin and Christina Wright, with additional contributions from Jennifer Shu.

PicSay

Essentially a drop-and-drag picture editor for your mobile phone, PicSay lets users spruce up their pictures with color correction, highlighting, word bubbles and distortion effects. It also can be used to create event invitations or holiday greeting cards that can be sent out to friends, family and associates. This application was developed by Eric Wijngaard.

Softrace

This application actually lets you set up real, live races with your friends and track their progress in real time while the race is going on. Whether on foot, bicycle or skis,  Softrace uses Google Maps' location API to track each user's progress, and can  store statistics of the race onto Android's SQLite database. This application was developed by Staffan Kjellberg and Thomas Kjellberg.

TuneWiki

An open source music-based social network, TuneWiki lets users share what they're listening to with each other, or to use Google Maps to find what users around the world are listening to. TuneWiki also plays audio and video for songs while scrolling synchronized lyrics as they play. The application creates a virtual library of songs that hooks up to the Internet and  suggests similar-sounding songs or artists. This application was developed by TuneWiki, with additional help from Rani Cohen, Chad Kouse, Zach Jobbs, Jared Fleener and Amnon Sarig.