15 minutes ago Myspace pulled the wraps off of their developer platform website. Apparently they eschewed the conventions previously set forth by Bebo and Facebook and are letting everyone in. Its a free for all folks!

Basics:

• Built on a combination of opensocial and myspace “Action Scripts”
• Myspace is hosting the apps (for now)
• You can run advertising on your canvas pages
• You have to apply for developer credentials
• You also have to submit your app for approval.
• Uses a REST API

So happy hacking folks. We’ll post more later as we get to play around with it. But this could be an exciting new platform to develop on.

Hey everyone, I’d like to announce Tasty, the first project to come out of the web+ labs. Its a super simple, super straightforward little app written in pure Ajax. Tasty (tastytag.com) is a graphical visualizer for delicious. Type in any url and see the top 10 tags people have used to tag that URL on delicious.

This is useful for those of you who were wondering what people were thinking about your product/site. Brand managers will hopefully love this as it gives you a quick snapshot of how people perceive your site.

All you have to do is type in a url, wait 2 seconds, and bam its off and running.

Hope you like it. The idea was spawned from this blog post at weBreakStuff

And we are still working out some of the bugs, so please be patient
thanks,

Brian

So if you know me, you know I’m a huge proponent of getting things done where its most cost effective. I am a huge believer in the globalization and global sourcing movement. But there is always this question in the back of my head being on the east coast: does your company’s geography matter?

Lots of people seem to argue (quite successfully) that being in California goes a long way in terms of resources you have at your disposal, but my question is, does that matter as much anymore?

So I propose a question to you, the reader of this blog: Where would you setup a company today? Both with cost being an issue and a non-issue.

Earlier in the week I talked about goal setting when building a web app, now today I think its important to look at your target market. Who are you trying to sell this app to? Who is likely to use it? How much money is this group worth? Etc, etc.One of the biggest mistakes I hear about or read about regularly is “I am going to target XYZ industry, they don’t have anyone doing what I want to do. Everyone in this industry is my potential clientèle.” Basically if you re-read this statement a few times there are a couple points you can surmise: 1. No one else is interested in doing this for a reason (hint, find out WHY), 2. You are trying to please too many people.Ok, so lets look at the idea of targeting an entire industry. There is one flaw to that goal: how do you cater to everyone in an entire industry? Look at the marketing industry, there have to be a million people who work in this industry in the US alone. I think a better approach is to look at your market, and see who within that market you can serve. It’d be crazy to think one tool could serve every academic, investor, or marketing guy.So what am I trying to emphasize here? FOCUS. Either focus with your target market or your target features. Keeping your focus on features is another way to tackle this. If you keep them tight and concise, you’re bound to execute them better.Next up, marketing it.