It’s called the MyMoneyAppUp Challenge, and it’s actually comprised of two separate but parallel contests that both ask for ideas about how to build a great financial app.

Today, the Dept. of Treasury has announced the contest(s) official judges, and they come from places like Facebook, Google, Harvard, and NBC. The final round judges include Facebook’s Platform Marketing head Katie Burke Mitic, Google’s Jonathan Weiner, Jean Chatzky of The Today Show, Entrepreneur Carol Realini, Omidyar Network’s Chris Bishko, and Harvard Professor of Economics Sendhil Mullainathan.

One contest, “App Design,” asks entrants to submit a 3-5 page app proposal along with images describing the app. Submissions for this close on August 12th. Entrants have a chance at two $2,500 Honorable Mention prizes, two $5,000 Runner-Up prizes, and one $10,000 Grand prize.

The smaller contest is called “IdeaBank,” and asks for simple app ideas in 140 characters or less. Submission for this part end on August 1st. Cash prizes for the IdeaBank range from $250 to $1000.

Judging begins on August 13th and will run until September 19th. On the day after the judging period ends, the winners will be announced.

News of the deal was confirmed by BeatThat.Quote.com managing director John Paleomylites on the company’s website.

“Our team is excited about becoming a part of Google. We look forward to working with their engineers to create new tools making it easier for consumers to choose the right financial products. We think we can offer more transparency and better pricing information than existing online offerings,” said Paleomylites.

“We are confident that by combining BeatThatQuote.com’s expertise in UK financial products with Google’s technology, we’ll accelerate innovation in this field, benefiting consumers and the companies offering these products. We plan to keep working with our current partners and look forward to working with new ones, too.”

Google Finance for smartphones users can now view mutual funds’ prices, and stats by entering the ticker into the search box.

Smartphone users can can also view wider stock charts by turning their phone on its side for a landscape view.

Besides being able to view last price and market caps for stocks in their portfolio, users can see how their portfolio is doing in real-time by clicking on the Performance tab from the Portfolio page.

Finance for smartphones is also faster. The Google+Finance+Blog%29″ title=”google finance smartphones”>Google Blog offers more details. “Well, we can’t help when the mobile networks get overloaded or you’re out of the 3G zone, but we are doing everything we can to help you get the information you need as fast as possible.”

“We now cache the CSS and Javascript from pages on the mobile site so that reloads are faster than ever.”

RampRate lowered the estimated bandwidth costs, stating that by locating its data centers in “out of the way” locations like Iowa and Finland, the company saves significantly on the cost of transmitting data. RampRate also took into account peering costs for what they say is a more accurate estimate.

While a $174M loss is still a significant loss, it’s not the sob story we’re used to seeing with YouTube and its tireless search for profitability. RampRate takes a cynical line on Google’s motivations for not correcting reports like Credit Suisse’s:

Google is no doubt thrilled to let YouTube be known as a financial folly. In the dangerous waters of online content, a whiff of potential profit is an irresistible lure for predators such as copyright lawyers circling user generated content monetization and content partners that are all too ready to turn on their distributors in a feeding frenzy.

They also take Google to task for shielding their relative profitability from their contributors, who might (well, probably not, but you know) be able to claim a share of that money:

The key is its lack of leverage with premium content partners, and the thousands of copyright holders whose content is posted by users onto YouTube without the owner’s permission. Any appearance of profits leads to more draconian revenue share demands from partners and additional lawsuits from owners of unlicensed content. An apparent loss deters this behavior, making it eminently advisable for Google to let the rumors of YouTube’s losses grow and compound. This perception of a loss-making business is one of the factors that contributed to ASCAP collecting only $1.6M instead of $12M from YouTube in a recent court judgment.

Ouch. What do you think: is Google hiding YouTube profits (or at least its less-impressive losses) or is YouTube a serious drain on Google’s resources?

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Users in the U.S. may have noticed new text and image ads Google is experimenting with on the results page of its Image Search.

Google has also introduced "Sponsored Videos" on YouTube that the company says is "a great example of matching ads to content."

Google has now launched text ads on Google Finance in the U.S. The ads appear in the upper right hand corner of the Google Finance homepage in a square box and are fairly unobtrusive.

Later in the year Google says it will start trialing text ads on a small number of news refinements within Google Search. As an example, if a user types in "iPod" into Google.com and then clicks on the news link on the upper-left hand side, they might see text ads displayed with those results.

On the official company blog Google says," Whenever we make changes like these, we carefully evaluate users’ reactions to ensure we’re holding true to our basic principles: that ads by Google should always be relevant and useful."

The New York Stock Exchange said its product started on the path to development in January 2007. They considered whether to make real-time information available on a flat fee basis, rather than basing a subscription on the number of users of the service.

After receiving the blessing of the Securities and Exchange Commission for a four-month pilot run, NYSE signed up Google and CNBC for the product, called NYSE Realtime Stock Prices. It’s available on Google Finance, and through mobile searches on Google for NYSE-traded stocks.

Google made a simple update to its Finance site, as they added a nice bit of functionality. Visitors may set a custom range of dates on the stock chart and view a stock’s performance over the designated time.

As noted on the Google Finance blog, the site gained custom date entry to show the viewer a preferred range of dates for a given commodity.

Pass the mouse over the date range on a stock’s chart, and the start and end date fields open for editing. One can look at a whole year’s performance, for example last year’s, by entering 2007 as the start date and 2008 as the end.

We found that if we entered a date that fell on a day where the market was normally not open, Google Finance would try to adjust to the nearest available business day. As a new feature on the still-in-beta Google Finance, it probably needs a little feedback and adjustment to optimize it further.

Google Finance always impressed us as a high-speed, no-frills alternative to the more voluminous offerings from Yahoo Finance, MSN Money, and publications like the Wall Street Journal. The interactive chart and the recent addition of real-time pricing for NASDAQ-traded securities continues to make it worth a visit.

The NASDAQ index and Google Finance teamed up on a pilot program to bring real time information from the tech-heavy index to the Internet. The exchange touted its status as the first US stock market to place real-time quotes on the Net for free.

“This is an important, and in many ways, overdue development in the U.S. securities markets,” NASDAQ Executive Vice President Adena Friedman said in a statement. Google and other companies, including CNBC, The Wall Street Journal Digital Network and financial web services firm Xignite, partnered on the deal.

Google Finance’s Matthew Simmons reminded visitors to that service’s blog how the company has wanted to offer this feature for a year and a half. Google discussed real-time quotes as a resource they have been working on since January 2007.

Delivering the last quoted price without the customary 15-20 minute delay will be a treat for anyone with an interest in the NASDAQ. Today probably wasn’t the greatest day in the world to start the service, as NASDAQ and other markets in general finished a little over a percentage point down in trading.

    Google Financial Survey

"This survey will help us learn what’s working for you and focus our energies on the areas that matter most to you," wrote Marianne Berkovich on the Google Finance Blog.  So let’s take a look at her questionnaire.

Some sections obviously try to slot users into certain socioeconomic groups – there are standard questions about employment status, level of education, and age.  Not a single dollar sign appears in the whole survey, though, so it appears Google isn’t trying too hard to pander to any one class.

Instead, the company seems more interested in how people go about investing whatever money they have.  Percentages of wealth, stock investment strategies, and the frequency with which they change things or check on current investments all get a fair amount of attention.  Competing services also come into play, as do favorite features and yet-to-be-implemented ideas.

We’d suggest that everyone who’s interested in financial stuff get their answers in soon; the survey’s end date hasn’t been announced, and it’s not every day that Google asks for such extensive feedback.

The site is identical in layout to its American counterpart, but naturally enough, it tracks different indices, exchanges, and news.  Also, as Google’s own Nick Fey points out to UK residents, "[Y]ou can find GBP currency quotes on the home page, so we can feel smug about how much cheaper everything will be when we visit the U.S."

People of several other nationalities may get the opportunity to feel superior, as well, since Fey later adds, "We have received many requests to bring this service to other countries around the world, and will be working to do that this year."

We can’t hold anything against those folks, though, considering that the whole housing-and-credit-crunch thing is pretty much our own fault.  It’s just mildly nice to see Google continue its expansion despite the recent stock crash ($140 in three months).

Meanwhile, Yahoo (which once ruled the American finance site roost) is in no position to do much of anything.  A disappointing earnings report and layoffs have put the company on shaky ground, and it seems that holding onto its current properties will be an accomplishment at this point.