Google Engineer Matt Cutts is offering a cash prize for the best open-source and Linux-based projects built on Microsoft’s Kinect. A contest to produce open-source drivers for the Kinect was already sponsored by Adafruit Industries which was won by a Héctor Martín Cantero within a few days.

Matt Cutts says on his blog that he is starting his own contest with $2000 in prizes. There are two $1000 prizes. The first $1000 prize goes to the person or team that writes the coolest open-source app, demo, or program using the Kinect. The second prize goes to the person or team that does the most to make it easy to write programs that use the Kinect on Linux.

To enter the contest just leave a comment on the blog with a link to your project, along with a very-short description of what your project does or your contribution to Kinect hacking. The contest runs until the end of the year: that’s Dec. 31st, 2010 at midnight Pacific time.

Matt says he may ask for outside input on who should be the winner, but he'll make the final call on the winners. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/open-kinect-contest/

Speaking of hacks, hopefully Microsoft’s sense of humor is better than Sarah Palin. The student convicted of hacking into former Alaska governor Sarah Palin's email account in 2008 was sentenced to a year in state custody today.

David Kernell guessed the answers to Ms Palin's security questions and reset her password, prosecutors said.

Ms Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate, compared the hacking to the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon....

Gee... do I need to repeat that!