The MySpace developer team is gearing up for our "Game Development on Social Platforms" tutorial day at the Game Developers Conference on March 10, 2010.

The day is designed to address building games for social platforms, the business aspects of developing social games, and how developers and designers can tap MySpace's massive and highly engaged audience. Developers and gamers will be able to directly start building or perfecting their games with the help of our technical team and our partners on hand for the event.

We've got some impressive speakers lined up, including Mike Jones (MySpace COO), Eric Eldon (InsideSocialGames Editor), Jeremy Liew (Managing Director of Lightspeed Ventures), Blake Commagere (Indie Games Developer), Ravi Krishnamurthy (MySpace Director of Partner Relations), the MySpace developer team, Unity3D, and more speakers TBA!

Check out more info, the agenda, and sign up here:

https://www.cmpevents.com/GD10/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=10761

We have a great day planned for developers, designers and gamers of all levels, so we hope you can join us!

Agenda: Game Development on Social Platforms, sponsored by MySpace - March 10

10:00 - 10:30am:

MySpace Keynote: Future of Game Development on MySpace

• Speaker: Mike Jones, MySpace COO
• MySpace's COO will discuss the future of game development on MySpace and reveal the MySpace Developer Contest winners

10:30 - 11:00am:

Unity 3D on MySpace

• Speaker: Unity3D
• Hear from Unity3D how you can build 3D-like quality games on social platforms

11:00 - 11:15am Coffee Break

11:15 - 11:45am:

• Hear from one of the largest mobile platforms and phone manufacturers about opportunities for developing mobile games and how to integrate with social platforms

11:45 - 12:30pm:

Tricks of the Gaming Trade; Insider Tips and Little Known Secrets

• Speakers: Chris To, senior software engineer at MySpace, OpenSocial representative (TBD)

• Learn from the MySpace developer team about the opportunities and benefits of developing social games using open standards. Also, hear how to integrate with MySpace from your own online destination game, as well as many little-known secrets and tips of game development

12:30 - 2:00pm Lunch

2:00 - 3:00pm

The Business of Social Games Panel

• Moderator: Eric Eldon, InsideSocialGames

• Speakers: Jeremy Liew, Lightspeed Ventures Managing Director, Blake Commagere, Indie Games Developer, Ravi Krishnamurthy, Director of Partner Relations at MySpace, and an avid gamer (TBD)

• Hear from a social game developer, a large traditional gaming company, a venture capitalist, and an avid gamer about what it takes to be a successful game developer on multiple platforms. Learn how people are making money, going viral, and what works in game design on social platforms

3:00 - 6:00pm:

Coding With Pros

• Get started building a mobile game or an OpenSocial game. The MySpace developer and mobile team along with our partners will be there to answer questions and teach you how to build a game. Whether you're ready to learn or need help with an existing game, our pros are standing by to work with you on your game development

####

At MySpace we want to provide as many resources as possible to developers to help them build great, social applications. As an augment to the resources currently available (like the MySpace developer site) I’m happy to report that a new book, "Building OpenSocial Apps," is now available.   The book covers everything from "building an app" basics to advanced OAuth signing and invoking the REST APIs from an external server.  It even throws in a bit about OSML and the next generation platform for building apps on MySpace.  It's published as part of the Addison-Wesely Professional series of books and is available from their website, Amazon, and at fine booksellers near you. Oh yeah, I’m also one of the authors, along with Chad Russell and Jessica Whyte ;)

http://www.informit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0321619064

Here’s what people are saying about the book:

...You can tell the authors have spent a lot of time building applications within the OpenSocial realm because they explain all of the major pain areas and the do's and don'ts of application development in this space... If I'd had a text like this, specifically the area of how to talk to the parent container, when I was building my first application on MySpace, I would have saved myself a week-long roundtrip ...

Since announcing the MySpace Developer Challenge a few weeks ago, we thought it would be a good idea to host an event where developers can get started on their submissions and come meet our developer team.

This MySpace devJam is a great way to turn the ideas you've been thinking about into something real and live on the site. The objective is to create something interesting, preferably that you can enter in our developer contest - the MySpace Developer Challenge, by the end of the day. We'll have coding sessions for each contest category and give you an update on new APIs. It's also a chance to get feedback from your peers and help from the MySpace Developer team.

We recently opened up our data by releasing a suite of free-to-use APIs that we hope will inspire the developer community to create innovative applications. To celebrate, we've launched the MySpace Developer Challenge, a competition aimed at encouraging further development from our partners. Come to this hackathon style event, learn about the contest, meet our team, and hack away with us!

We hope to see you there! RSVP here.

• MySpace’s Real-Time Stream API allows the full MySpace activity stream to be pushed to your site in real-time. The API includes granular filters to control the amount of data seen.  Show us your best integration of this API on your site and enter for a chance to win.
• To spur some ideas, check out these examples by OneRiot, who launched their real-time search integration, Groovy Corporation, who included MySpace in their massively parallel processing technology, and Google will be leveraging our data in their Google Real-Time Search shortly. Also, check out our own internally built demo of our Real-Time Stream API.
  

• Build a new MySpace app and enter for a chance to win.

• MySpace’s Open Search API allows your site to include public MySpace profile information in search results. Users can search for people by name, profile type (eg musician, celebrity, comedian) or email address and filter search results by gender, age and location. Show us your best integration of this API and enter your site for a chance to win.

• MySpace is looking for innovative uses of our APIs for mobile applications. We’re accepting submissions for mobile apps that either leverage our iPhone SDK for integration into existing apps and games or create a stand-alone MySpace application that surprises us with your creative use of our APIs, for any mobile platform. Think big or focus on a core feature – the goal is to enhance or reinvent a mobile MySpace experience.

• With MySpace’s Photo Upload API you can now upload photos from your site or app into MySpace. This includes the creation of public or private albums. Show us your best integration of this API and enter for a chance to win.

Hot off the heels of our Real-time web initiative announcement at LeWeb, we're already seeing our first implementations in the wild! Collecta, a real-time search engine, is one of the first to use of our Real-Time Stream API in production.

Today Collecta launched a dedicated real-time MySpace search that offers the first true real-time view for users into our community’s public mood, activities, status, and more.

Collecta gives users a summary of what's going on in the world right now on any topic, as it happens.  With Collecta's dedicated search of MySpace (available at myspace.collecta.com), you can get that same instantaneous, rich view into the mood, photos, videos, blog posts and status updates from MySpace users. The Collecta-powered search pushes out content the moment it has been published and lets users filter their result streams based on content type (videos, photos, blog comments, articles, updates, etc).

Collecta is using the MySpace Real-Time Stream API to power this search for users. With this API, Collecta is getting the full public MySpace stream pushed to their site with additional controls and metadata. If you’re interested in enabling this functionality on your site, see the documentation for more information: Real-Time Stream Functional Overview.

We’re hoping to see even more uses of this API in coming months, especially since we’re giving away $10,000 for the Most Innovative Use of our Real-Time Stream API in the MySpace Developer Challenge.

Working on a project that uses our Real-Time Stream? Send us a note, we'd love to check it out.

./BBK

• We’ve included access to MySpace content using the latest version of the OpenSocial v0.9 standard.
• Our team developed the MySpace JSL (JavaScript Library), a lightweight library that provides the ability to write to the MySpace Stream from a web application, and retrieve social data using OpenSocial.
• In a series of API stream enhancements, we’ve exposed the ability to read and write comments. We also included semantic concepts from the activitystreams standard (among other changes). All additions are in OpenSocial-compliant extensions.

• A rich stream of events, using ActivityStrea.ms atom extensions, with additional contextual information delivered via Portable Contacts, geo and ranking atom extensions.
• The powerful subscription query language lets you specify multiple topics (at launch you can save 20 queries per application).
• Public and private channels that respect users’ privacy. With the same performance, you can get friends-only updates or public updates.
• A robust transport layer, which includes retries on failure, and batching. In addition, a mechanism that alerts when queries are deactivated.
• Powerful sampling controls; you can specify a sample rate, target location, source application as well as the ability to filter by object type. 
• Strong open standards. Our PUSH technology follows PubSubHubbub’s hub-to-subscriber, and industry-standard HTTP authentication.
  

See the documentation for more information: Real-Time Stream Functional Overview

Open Search API
Just as you can search for people on MySpace, you can now search via our API. A search can be by name, email address or profile type (e.g. musician, celebrity, comedian). Further, you can filter a search result by gender, age and location.

See the documentation for more details: Open Search

Status and Mood Commenting API
Through the new API, users can interact with that stream without leaving an external service. If a user comments on a MySpace status on your site, you can now upload that comment back into a user’s MySpace activity stream.

See the documentation for more details:  Status and Mood Comments

Photo Upload API
Adding to our support for media items, you can now upload photos from your site into MySpace (we’ve always supported the ability to download). This includes the creation of public or private albums.

See the documentation for more details: Media Items

Updated Version of Post To/Share On MySpace
We’ve updated the way to simply share content with friends on MySpace from third party sites. Now, when a user posts content from another site, it goes directly into the activity stream as a rich link back to the external service (opposed to a status, or bulletin).

See the documentation for more details: Post To MySpace

We already have early adopters using our new data sources. OneRiot is launching their real-time search integration today, and Groovy Corporation is also including MySpace into their massively parallel processing technology. Google will be leveraging our data in their Google Real-Time Search shortly, as well.

To usher in our new resources, we’re initiating our MySpace Developer Challenge, a competition aimed at encouraging further innovation from our developer partners. Awards will be cash prizes and premium marketing on MySpace for the most interesting use of the new APIs. Our judging panel will include Mike Jones - MySpace Chief Operating Officer, Ron Conway - Founder and Managing Partner of Angel Investors LP, David Glazer - Engineering Director at Google, and Robert Scoble - renowned blogger and tech evangelist. Winners will be announced at the Game Developers Conference on March 10, 2010 in San Francisco.

Please visit the new and improved developer site, http://developer.myspace.com, to get started today!

Today we are announcing the public beta of OpenSocial 0.9 with OSML and Data Pipelining. For off-site developers and API-based apps, we've had OpenSocial 0.9 REST APIs available for a few months, go check it out. This beta launch today represents the second half of an exciting and feature-packed release of OpenSocial on the MySpace Developer platform.

"What does OpenSocial 0.9 do for me?" you might ask. There are lots of great things:

• A simple tag-based syntax for accessing data (Data Pipelining).
• A powerful template system for defining reusable content as "custom tags" for server-side or client-side rendering (OSML).
• A rich expression language for accessing data (OpenSocial Expression Language - or OS EL).
• Improved Gadget XML support for writing cross-container apps.
• Internationalization support with message bundles.
• Faster renderings performance
  

Now, instead of writing 30+ lines of JavaScript code with requests and callback handlers to get a list of friends, one Data Pipeline tag can retrieve this data:

If your app needs to display and format data and UI components, it can be done with OSML markup instead of JavaScript. To define a tag "myapp:PersonBlock" showing a person's name and image in a box, use the following markup.

Any data declared with Data Pipeline tags can be easily accessed via the OpenSocial Expression Language (OS EL) within your app. The code to show the name of the first friend in the friend list registered under the key "myFriends" is as simple as this:

Improved Gadget XML support means your app's source code can be managed with a single code file. Porting between other OpenSocial containers will be greatly simplified. We're also exposing REST APIs for app management. You'll be able to wire in your favorite code editing tools for app management.

As part of the improved Gadget XML support and the new OS EL, you can easily internationalize and localize your app to be used in different cultures. The text of your app can be defined in different message bundles and accessed via OS-EL statements. A "Hello World" app supporting English and Spanish would contain code as below:

<Locale> 
 <messagebundle>
  <msg name="greeting">Hello World</msg>
</messagebundle>

</Locale>

<Locale lang="es">
  <messagebundle>
  
  <msg name="greeting">Hola Mundo</msg>

</messagebundle>

</Locale>


...


${Msg.greeting}

This post is just a teaser of what's coming from the MySpace Developer Platform team. Over the next several weeks we'll be diving into the features of 0.9 in more depth, adding tutorials, and building sample apps to get you up and running.

There will be a number of tutorials on creating OSML apps linked to from the OpenSocial Version 0.9 Wiki Page. For now, you can create a friends list app as follows:

1. Go to the developer site, sign in, and create a new On-site app named "My Friends".

2. On the Upload App XML page, scroll down and click the (Beta) App Gadget Source Editor button

3. Click the Install button on the gadget editor screen to install the app you've just created.

4. Insert the below code in the source text box and save:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Module xmlns:os="http://ns.opensocial.org/2008/markup" >
  <ModulePrefs title="Friends need Hello also" description="This is the desc">
    <Require feature="opensocial-0.9"/>
    <Require feature="opensocial-templates"/>
    <Require feature="opensocial-data"/>
  </ModulePrefs>
  <Content type="html" view="canvas">
    <script type="text/os-data">
     <os:ViewerRequest key='vwr' />
     <os:PeopleRequest key='friends' userId="@viewer" groupid="@friends" />
    </script>
    <script type="text/os-template">
     <h1>Hello world, ${vwr.displayName}</h1>
	 Your friends are:

	 <div>
	 <os:Repeat expression="${friends}">
	 <p>
	 Friend number ${Context.index} is: ${Cur.displayName}
	 <img src="${Cur.thumbnailUrl}" />
	 </p>	 
	 </os:Repeat>	 
	 </div>

  </script>
 </Content>
</Module>

Happy coding!

Hi everyone,

We are extending our 0.9 REST API offerings by adding new endpoints as well as adding new features to existing endpoints to make our 0.9 offering richer. We are committed to exposing data through Open Standards so app developers can create the finest applications on the web. Some of these new features are not part of the previous MySpace REST APIs so this should encourage you to switch to 0.9 if you haven’t done so already.

The link to the main resource page for REST 0.9 APIs is located here. Please find documentation links and highlights of these new features below.  Please review our Terms of use, especially Section 10.2, before you start using these features.

New Endpoints

StatusMoodComments

This endpoint provides a way to fetch the comments posted on a user’s StatusMood updates. It also provides a way to request the comment author’s basic info (image, name and profile URL) along with the comments themselves. This could reduce the number of calls to the server you need to make if you plan on displaying the commenter’s data along with the comments.

Please see details here.

ProfileComments

This provides a way to fetch the comments posted on a user’s profile. It also provides a way to request the comment author’s basic info along with the comments, which again will reduce the number of calls to the server if that information is needed.

Please see details here.

MediaItemComments
You can now fetch comments posted on a user’s images and videos. Again, this endpoint allows you to fetch the comment author’s basic info to save a second request to the server.

Please see details here.

Enhancements

StatusMood

• The StatusMood endpoints now offer APIs to fetch friends’ status mood updates as well as provides a way to fetch StatusMood history.
• Apps can also fetch recent comments on a user status in the same call.
• MySpace now allows syncing/updating StatusMood from various sources like Twitter. You can get that information in your requests.

Check the documentation for the StatusMood APIs here.

Also don’t forget to check out the filters that this endpoint has to offer.

Activities

We are also adding Activity Streams extension properties to activities returned from our OpenSocial 0.9 Activities endpoint in this release.  Activity Streams is a data format that describes what people are doing around the web, for example: posting photos and videos, sharing music with friends and writing blog entries.  If you are already familiar with the Activity Streams atom format, you can now access all the Activity Streams goodness, like actors, verbs, objects and object-types, in JSON and plain old XML.  Find more information about Activity Streams on the http://activitystrea.ms web site.

Check out the MySpace implementation for the same here.

SDKs

Our PHP and Java SDKs have been updated to support these new features and the others are in the works. Also, these new features are developed using Open Standards like OpenID, OAuth and OpenSocial which should help make your experience smooth.

Also, if you have missed out, visit this earlier blog post for more information about complete suite of REST 0.9 APIs.

Happy coding!

While MySpaceID employs a number of powerful features for your site, two in particular are extremely meaningful: a simple user login and a streamlined process to push content into the MySpace stream. Qype, a pan-European local review site, often called “The European Yelp,” recently integrated with MySpaceID in order to leverage Single-Sign On and Activity Publishing.

Qype uses the MySpaceID  log in flow and pulls in user’s data to pre-fill a user’s Qype account:

MySpaceID simplifies and encourages users to login, and guarantees quality user data for Qype.

Once a user fully registers, Qype can publish their reviews into MySpace - providing unique and interesting content in the MySpace Stream- and driving traffic back to Qype

:

Interested in learning about how you can publish into the MySpace stream? Check out our latest documentation on the MySpaceID JSL (JavaScript Library). Interested in what else MySpaceID can do for your product or brand? Our additional MySpaceID docs should fill you in.

Happy coding,

./BBK

One of the great things about working here at MySpace is that we believe in open content distribution.

As you may have noticed during the past month, we’ve made significant strides in establishing MySpace as a test bed for innovation among the developer community with the rollout of our Qizmt computing framework, MySpaceID integrations with Tweetdeck and Windows Live among others, and the most recent Twitter sync functionality.

Today, we’re adding another enhancement to our list of MySpaceID offerings, our MySpaceID Javascript library (JSL).

• Raise activities on behalf of the current user that will show up in their activity stream on MySpace
• Make a subset of client-side OpenSocial calls
• Retrieve an authorization token for further server-to-server calls for the user.

The first two sites to use the MySpaceID functionality are Daily Fill and Redux, making it easy for users to securely bring content experiences from those sites to MySpace to share with friends. Both serve as popular forms of entertainment among users and align with our ongoing efforts to enhance the social entertainment experience.

• Find and enjoy videos, photos, music, and websites recommended by people who love the same stuff you do. Link your MySpace account and keep your MySpace friends updated on what you’re up to on Redux.
• Login to Daily Fill with your MySpace credentials – no need to create a new account, and post celebrity news articles you like into your MySpace activity stream.

Here’s a screenshot of the new experience on Redux:

Here’s what an activity from Daily Fill looks like in the user activity stream:

Code Sample: Here is a easy to follow example of how to raise activities and make OpenSocial calls with MySpaceID JSL: Example Usage

Given our commitment to open standards, such as OpenID, OAuth, Portable Contacts, OpenSocial, and Activity Streams (all used to create MySpaceID), the ability to allow users to bring in external content was a natural progression for us and we’re excited to see how users respond. As we continue to help set the standard for open authentication on the web, MySpace users can expect to see integrations with many more of their favorite destinations around the Web.

To keep you posted on cool sites integrating with MySpaceID, we launched a new page dedicated to highlighting featured implementations where you can link your MySpace account. Check it out here: http://www.myspace.com/myspaceid.

Visit these earlier company blog posts for more information about our initiatives to further promote open content distribution through collaborations syncing with Twitter, Windows Live and Tweetdeck, in addition to the recent open-sourcing of Qizmt and MSFast.

We are pleased to announce our full support of OpenSocial 0.9 today.  Last week we gave you a sneak peek of our OpenSocial 0.9 support by launching our photo API.  This week we’re taking it one step further: we’re releasing all of our current OpenSocial 0.9 REST APIs as a public BETA. Here at MySpace we are committed to open standards, and will continue to support community driven protocols like OpenSocial.  We’re very excited to take this big step to support OpenSocial 0.9!

Our OpenSocial 0.9 implementation was built on an entirely new framework with three main goals in mind for developers: stability, performance and compliance to the OpenSocial 0.9 specification.  These three goals will yield more consistent results, fewer errors, and means that your code should be even more portable to other social networks that support OpenSocial.

While we’re labeling this as a BETA we feel our APIs are in a very solid state and are ready for widespread use.

The PHP and C# SDKs have been fully updated to use all of the new 0.9 APIs we have available.  The other SDKs are currently being updated for your use.

Documentation for all the API’s can be found below. In addition to the wikis we’ve started to update the community supported SDKs found at opensocial.org.  As always, make sure to review our Terms of Use, especially Section 10.2, before you start using the new endpoints.

Happy coding!

Activities

Albums

AppData

Groups

MediaItems

People

StatusMood

Notifications

• Status updates
• Blog Entries
• Photo uploads
• Music

Today we’re pleased to roll out the OpenSocial 0.9 Media Item and Album endpoints, which allows you to upload photos to MySpace and perform other photo and video related functions using MySpaceID and OpenSocial Apps. 

This new endpoint was built from the ground up with an eye on performance.  It should add some nice gains in terms of stability and performance over the old API and you should start seeing fewer errors, especially during the upload process.

To allow you to start really digging into it we’ve created a couple of wiki pages that should help you get up and running.

http://wiki.developer.myspace.com/index.php?title=OpenSocial_v0.9_Albums
http://wiki.developer.myspace.com/index.php?title=OpenSocial_0.9_MediaItems

Another quick way to get started consuming the new photo functionality are the SDKs.  There is a list of community supported SDKs linked to by the OpenSocial Foundation’s official website that we are helping to update for 0.9:

http://wiki.opensocial.org/index.php?title=Client_Libraries

We’ve completed the PHP and C# SDKs, so you can check the individual SDK sites for further details.

For Adobe AIR applications that use MySpaceID, we also have an AS3 SDK, which can be found at:

http://wiki.developer.myspace.com/index.php?title=Category:MySpaceID_SDK_for_ActionScript_3

This SDK only uses 0.9 for photos.  The rest of the SDK methods use the 0.8 REST APIs until we release broader 0.9 support.

Before you start using the new photo endpoints, we ask that you review our Terms of Use, specifically Section 10.2:

http://wiki.developer.myspace.com/index.php?title=Developer_Addendum_to_MySpace.com_Terms_of_Use_Agreement

We are excited to announce a MySpaceID integration with TweetDeck, a personal browser for staying in touch with what’s happening now, connecting you with your friends on MySpace and other social networks – all in one place.
 
The MySpaceID integration with TweetDeck lets you stay in touch with everything that's happening on MySpace sorted with columns for status and moods, comments on your profile and your friends' activity stream, including playlists, photos, events, videos, apps and more. You can receive notifications to make sure you don’t miss a thing.
 
 

With this integration you can keep your finger on the pulse of MySpace in TweetDeck as well as:
•      Update your status and mood from TweetDeck.
•      Stay in touch and see your Friends’ Status and Mood easily.
•      View photos, events, videos and more in Friends’ Activity Stream column.
•      Preview MySpace photos and albums.  
•      Keep an eye on your profile with the ‘My Comments’ column.
 
Let us know what you think of this integration and happy connecting! For more information and to download it for free, visit www.myspace.com/tweetdeck  and http://tweetdeck.com.

 We’re happy to announce a new engagement component for apps: Notification Alerts.  When users receive notifications, they will see a “New App Notifications!” alert on their user home page.

 New alerts are shown just below the main profile image when a user first logs in. Below is a screenshot of how indicators look:

 Notifications are a great way to keep users engaged (we’ve already seen good numbers for apps using them!)  

 Are your apps using notifications? To learn how to implement notifications (and start showing these indicators,) see our documentation on how to get started with notifications.

 Any feedback?  Let us know below.