I agree with nicola.mfb on the 2 objectives. The idea with the beginners is a good one, though a bit hard to define who is a beginner and who isn't.

I would probably consider myself as a beginner. I'm a professional developer, but I've never made an app for a mobile device, nor one in QT/GTK. I made a port of a game for N900 (see my signature), I don't think that makes me too experienced though.

Some guidelines for that should be set I think. The lasercut stand is cool, I really like it, but I wouldn't like to rob it off anyone thats more noob than me

About the rewards for apps from the wishlist, I don't see how it helps with those 2 objectives. The wishlist can give developers ideas, if they don't have their own, and also an app high on the list will probably have high chances of winning if it is good. Although it would give devs motivation to make an app they don't need themselves... But still, I don't think its good to shatter the prices too much.

EDIT:
Oh, for the wishlist, it really needs to have some voting system and should be ordered by popularity. Hard to do with just a wiki? Maybe a thread and update the wiki manually? Thats a tedious job though. The brainstorming system seems similar to what we need here, but this would be abusing it quite a bit...