Good Morning Silicon Valley

As promised when Google revealed its mobile-phone plans last week (see “Google announces the Gee-it’s-just-software-after-all phone“), the search sovereign has released the tools developers can use to build applications on the Android platform for use on Open Handset hardware. And just to prime the pump, Google has launched the Android Developer Challenge, putting up $10 million in prizes to smoke out 50 innovative, useful tools and widgets for the mobile user. The top 50 apps submitted between Jan. 2 and March 3, 2008, will win $25,000 each with a chance of bigger prizes of up to $275,000. Developers, to your keyboards.