You wouldn't think that the folks at Google would be driving people towards the competition, but engineer Matt Cutts is so stoked about the possibilities that Microsoft's Kinect has to offer that he's offering cold hard cash to the coolest hacks that he can find.

A $1000 prize is being offered to the developer who creates the best open source program or demo based around the Kinect. A second $1000 will be given to the developers who can create a simple Linux based Kinect program writing application. We've already seen several hacks around like the multitouch functions that Cameron wrote about earlier today and a nightshot function, so it will be interesting to see what people can come up with when there's cash on the line as well as internet famousness.