The evolution of laughter and violence
Zoologists have identified signs of laughter in apes from tickling them. According to the researchers, from Portsmouth University, efforts to trace the origin of laughter - which they say evolved over the past 10 milllion to 16 million years -...
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MySpace has announced the public launch of its MySpace Application Gallery, which is stocked with more than 1,000 new applications that its users can add to their profiles.
The gallery, which grew out of MySpace's move in February to open its platform to developers, includes applications from a wide variety of categories, including from music, politics and causes, to quizzes and polls and video.
Steve Pearman, MySpace's vice president of product strategy, said at the recent O'Reilly Web 2.0 Expo that the content of the gallery was driven by user requests for rich applications that provide an engaging experience and include strong privacy protections and insulation from spam.
"What's been launched is a direct reflection of these desires," he says. "That whole project has been driven by user input on what they want out of our apps. You have to check your ego at the door. It is not about what we want. It is about what the community needs."
The MySpace home page will feature an application gallery icon at the top of the page so users can easily be directed to it. Users will have one-click access to the gallery from their home page through individual "control panels". In addition, MySpace plans to launch a page to highlight featured applications in an effort to further promote the contents and support developers.
Josh Catone, a blogger at web technology news site Read Write Web, predicts that the applications will be well-received by MySpace users.
"The same crop of silly, fun applications that have done so well on Facebook, should play to the MySpace audience as well," Catone says. "We fully expect a quick uptake from MySpace users, who have already shown an affinity for widgets."
But, he adds, MySpace may face a large hurdle to adoption unless it can eliminate application spam — that is, users being overloaded by invitations to use a specific application they may not have any interest in.
"The long-term success of the platform may depend on whether MySpace can keep the noise to an acceptable level," he says.
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