MySpace is hosting a developer event at our San Francisco office on January 14th where developers can come and learn about the MySpace Developer Challenge, meet the MySpace developer team, and hack away with us!
This MySpace devJam “hackathon” 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 by the end of the day. We'll have coding sessions for each contest category and give you an update on our OpenSocial work and 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. Now, we’re opening up our San Francisco office on January 14th (1 – 5pm) so developers can get started on their submissions with help from the MySpace developer team.
We hope to see you there! For a detailed agenda and to RSVP, go to http://myspacedevjam.eventbrite.com/.
Posted by Amy Walgenbach, MySpace Developer Platform
Tags: Application Packaging, Open Social, Social API, Virtualization
Calling all developers! MySpace is hosting the MySpace Developer Challenge, a competition aimed at encouraging further innovation from the developer community. We believe the best onsite and offsite integrations with MySpace are not here yet and the MySpace Developer Challenge intends to find them. We also want to reward innovative developers big and small and recognize them as much as we can.
Developers can participate by creating a new MySpace application or integrating our API's on their website. The Challenge will feature monetary and promotional prizes, to be given out to those developers whose submissions are picked by a panel of judges. There is a two month submission window, culminating in winners announced at the Games Developer Conference in San Francisco in March 2010. Submissions for the Challenge will be accepted from January 4 through Feb 28, 2010, and the most promising entries will be recognized in March.
The contest features five categories, and each category winner will be awarded $10,000 (for a total of $50,000) as well as MySpace promotion.
MySpace Developer Challenge Categories:
1. Most innovative use of the Real-Time Stream API
o 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.
o 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.
2. Best new MySpace app
o Build a new MySpace app and enter for a chance to win.
3. Most innovative use of the Open Search API
o 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.
4. Most innovative MySpace Integration on Mobile
o 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.
5. Most innovative use of Photos
o 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.
Our judging panel will include Mike Jones - MySpace COO, Ron Conway -
Founder and Managing Partner of Angel Investors LP, David Glazer -
Engineering Director at Google, and Robert Scoble - renowned blogger and
tech evangelist.
Go to http://www.myspace.com/developerchallenge for more information and to submit your entry.
Posted by Amy Walgenbach, MySpace Developer Platform
Tags: Application Packaging, Open Social, Social API, Virtualization
MySpace is 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 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 on MySpace?" 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:
<os:PeopleRequest key="myFriends" userId="@viewer" groupId="@friends" />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.
<script type="text/os-template" tag="myapp:PersonBlock">
<div style="border:3px solid green;">
<img src="${My.person.thumbnailUrl}" />
${My.person.displayName}
</div>
</script>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:
The first friend's name is:
${myFriends[0].displayName}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}
Over the next few 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, so stay tuned. 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!
Tags: Application Packaging, Open Social, Social API, Virtualization
