Google on Monday opened registration for its Code Jam 2006, with the finals scheduled for the company's New York engineering office in October.

The qualifying round for the annual online coding competition begins Sept. 5, the same day registration closes, the search engine giant said. The top 100 contestants will get an all expenses paid trip to New York City for the Oct. 27 finals. It's the first time the finals will be held in New York instead of Google's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.

Last year, more than 14,500 developers from 32 countries participated in the contest. Marek Cygan of Poland took home the grand prize.

The competition presents contestants with a series of problems meant to test their programming skills and creativity. This year's grand prize is $10,000. Smaller amounts are awarded to the top 100 developers. Google gives away a total of $155,000 in prize money.

Further information is available through Google's Code Jam site.