About a month ago i took a stab at really whipping myspace into shape. Currently, my employer has me riled up to build a crazy-custom myspace page…somewhere between the full overhaul i did for my page and the clean “skinning” style that others have adopted.

So i was talking to a friend of mine about the obscene amount of money some people are charging for corporate myspace pages…you know, the banner-less ones with all kinds of product placement, etc. etc. $10k + monthly maintenance fees + hundreds of thousands (yes, you read that right) in ad spending to get a banner free page for yourself. its a disgusting, commodity-based market that is 100% fabricated. But its working for some really good sales people, so good for them.

My friend got this crazy idea in my head that it might be valuable to create a myspace “IDE” of sorts. I told him it was impossible because there wasn’t an API for myspace. I really need to drop “impossible” from my vocabulary because every time i think there’s no way i can pull something off, someone proves me wrong.

Turns out there is an API…sort of.

1-2-pimp (translated from german for your convenience) runs on the pseudo api created by imagelooop. Effectively it takes whatever code you provide it, and along with a user/pass for myspace authentication, it posts it automagically into your “about me” section (the technique used for myspace customization).

So with that available…all i need to do is document what myspace allows/disallows code wise, build up some neato drag and drop flash components (for rss, music playing, etc), and build up a cute little IDE so that you can, in theory, build the holy grail yourself: a myspace page without the suck.

im VERY against WYSIWYG. It belongs NOWHERE near professional web development. But wouldn’t it be nice to have myspace pages that aren’t so blindingly painful to look at? a nice intermediate step between those $10,000 corporate myspace pages and things like this.

right. like i needed something else to fool around with. ::rolls eyes::

my lack of posts for the last couple of weeks is the fault of a)my employer and b)my university. things are leveling out, so real posts are coming soon. In the mean time:

• working with CM Access on CreativeCamp v2.0 for December 2nd
• ive got a designer working on my website. phase two is on its way. (phase one was the arrival of business cards)
• as i mentioned, school is in full swing. and sucks. I’m stuck in classes that are nothing more than busy work, and as you might notice from my lack of post, i barely have time for REAL work…so busy work is tough to pencil in. luckily, some reasonable people at drexel are actually listening to my issues with the program (which will be outlined a post to come)
• happy cog philadelphia, eh? thats bound to stir up the local industry

all of these topics will be expanded in the near future. promise promise promise.