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One of the many initiatives on MySpace’s upcoming roadmap is a renewed focus on the applications platform, most notably surrounding games. The company announced this morning at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco the launch of a new Games Gallery experience, a gaming-specific iPhone app, and a number of new tools and analytics for developers.

As we learned in our interview yesterday, about one-third of MySpace users currently play games daily, and the goal is to drive that number up to 50%. The new MySpace Games Gallery experience gives users a better interface for discovering, sharing and rating new titles by providing personalized recommendations, popular game charts and notifications from friends’ Streams.

A new iPhone application, dubbed Neon, lets users access their games on the go. The app provides real-time notifications that are shareable with friends, access to all games currently available on MySpace and a way to remotely install games right from the phone. A number of new social games are launching on the platform as well, including Fish Isle, Hoop Fever Live, Kingdoms of Camelot, Paradise Paintball, SPP Ranch, Warlords, Wild Ones and Zombie Revenge.

For game developers, MySpace is adding a number of new features to the platform, including a new API for analytics, a way to track how users are finding new games, access to improved performance tools for multiplayer games and integration with Unity, a powerful 3D gaming engine. The latter is part of an effort to encourage third-party developers to craft more sophisticated and visually rich game titles than the current crop of casual social titles currently in vogue on social networks (Farmville et al).

Do you play casual games on MySpace, Facebook or other social networks? Are you interested in being able to access the titles you play from your phone? Would you be interested in seeing more sophisticated games become available on social networks?

Tags: casual games, games, GDC, GDC2010, iphone, iphone apps, myspace, social games, unity, video games

We've all heard of the big company that started as two guys in their garage, but these days, with startup organizations and incubators, more and more success stories seem to feature companies that built their success from group collaboration. One excellent example of how startups can take advantage of collaboration is to work in a coworking environment with other companies and entrepreneurs.

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Tuesday I had the opportunity to chat with Harry Lin, CEO of Lottay, an online gifting service that has spent a large portion of its short history coworking with outside developers and entrepreneurs. Starting in October of last year, the company spent six weeks working in the offices of San Francisco-based Ruby on Rails development house Pivotal Labs. In December they moved into a space at the Ventura Ventures Technology Center where they work alongside other consumer Internet startups, sharing ideas and resources.

"The thing about a startup is that you're always under resourced; you never have enough people," Lin told ReadWriteWeb Tuesday. "So the more you can make out of less, the better off your are, the faster you can go, and a startup is all about speed."

Lin, formerly the Vice President of ABC.com and General Manager of Evite, was brought on board at Lottay after the company received Series A funding in the summer of 2009. Below are some highlights from my discussion with Lin on the benefits of coworking environments for startups.

How did Lottay benefit from the Pivotal Labs experience?
We camped out at the Pivotal Labs office for the entire six weeks. We were in San Francisco and sitting in their office everyday with the two developers that were on our contract. The reason this worked better is that it was very intense and very concentrated; you had no other distractions. The other reason it was fantastic is that its a room full of 25 top notch Ruby on Rails developers. We were only paying for two of them in our engagement, but there were the other 23 sitting in that room working on various things.

We would come up with a problem or a hurdle we couldn't get over and we would just shout out, "Hey has anyone ever done this with a library?" and some guy would jump up and say, "Yeah, I've done that!" Voila! Problem solved. And that would happen all the time. So we were getting the benefit of this very open, huge brain trust that Pivotal had even though, technically speaking, we were just paying for the two guys. The third other thing I'd say was great about the environment is that they had other clients in there. So we got to meet, talk to, and get to know some other Internet companies, and that was really cool."

What is the experience like now in Ventura?
There are 12 of us in this incubator here in the city of Ventura; it's a very deliberate ecosystem the city is trying to push, and we're part of that ecosystem. We all speak the same language, the same jargon, the same shorthand. If one of us comes up with a brilliant idea or an interesting strategic question, we'll grab each other, white board it, sit in a room, chat in the hall way - the kind of random things that happen when you're all physically located in the same place. The other thing that we benefit from is that because this is run by the city, we get a lot of support in the form of a fantastic rate on rent, free wifi, marketing and public relations, and they've helped us find recruits when we have openings to hire people. The city is more than just a landlord, they're trying to jump-start this ecosystem.

So you would suggest that early stage startups try to find coworking space?
If possible, I would not do the "in your basement" or "in your garage by yourself". Those are the legendary stories we like to hear about, but I think the majority of successful startups has had some kind of coworking environment. I worked for nine years in the Bay area and I know that while there are official incubators, there are also these offices where nine out of the ten companies there are high-tech companies. Being with other people who are doing the same thing is hugely beneficial.

In the consumer Internet space, especially with how the Web has evolved over the last decade, everything is getting more social and more open, both in terms of the consumer behavior and in terms of the development and how things are produced. So it just stands to reason that in launching and trying to grow these types of businesses, you should be more social as well.

Is there anything startups should avoid when in a coworking environment?
It is tempting to do a lot of partnerships with other startups because you're there, you know each other, you understand each other's pains and trials and tribulations. Resist the temptation unless is makes a lot of sense. Usually what a startup needs by way of partnership is a large established company.

What is your advice to the young startups out there looking to launch or grow their business?
There will be 100 problems to solve every week. I can guarantee you that at least 75 of those problems have already been experienced and solved by someone else. That's the problem with being in a garage or a bedroom by yourself; you'll probably end up trying to solve those 75 problems yourself. When you're colocated and coworking with other entrepreneurs, you can share. "Oh, you've got that problem? I've got that problem, and here's the solution." You can benefit from their learnings and not have to reinvent the wheel, which saves you a lot of time.

The first Lady Gaga song pack for the Rock Band music video game is coming next week. It will include the songs “Bad Romance,” “Just Dance,” “Monster” and “Poker Face.” You’ll be able to buy each song for $2 or all of them for $6.99.

Yes, “Paparazzi” and “LoveGame” are missing from the list, but this might be just the beginning of Rock Band’s Gaga content. Gaga is a hit in geek culture. She’s a spokeswoman for Polaroid. One hundred thousand Facebook users rallied to create and celebrate National Lady Gaga day. Twenty-five percent of Vevo’s 35 million visitors only watch Gaga videos. And her “Bad Romance” music video (which has almost 143 million views on YouTube) is loaded with gadgets like iPods, laptops, and Wii remotes.

Rock Band and Lady Gaga are already in the zeitgeist together. Last year, South Park ran a scene with Cartman performing Gaga’s “Poker Face” on Rock Band with his friends and it became a viral YouTube video. We’ve embedded it below. Have fun, and get this: This South Park version will be available for Rock Band, too!

You’ll be able to start bluffin’ with your muffin’ (or at least your suite of fake musical instruments) on the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii on Tuesday, March 16, and on the Sony PlayStation 3 the following Thursday, March 18.

South Park Does Lady Gaga in Rock Band

Tags: celebrities, electronic arts, harmonix, Lady Gaga, music, playstation 3, PS3, rock band, South Park, video, video games, Wii, Xbox 360

Sony just announced that it is expanding its selection of newspapers and magazines in its e-book store. Starting today, users of Sony's e-readers will be able to subscribe to 20 new newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, Boston Globe, San Jose Mercury News, PC Magazine and Foreign Affairs. With the newspaper business in turmoil, it only makes sense for these papers to try to get a better foothold on more devices.

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eInk vs. LCDs

For users who don't own an e-reader yet but are looking into getting one, the question right now is to either wait for the iPad and go with a regular LCD screen for reading books, or to choose a more traditional (and cheaper) e-reader like the Kindle or Sony Reader that feature electronic ink. While some users don't mind the blacklit LCD screens of their phones to read, others can't fathom reading any long-form content on these screens.

Fighting Off the iPad

For Sony, Amazon, B&N and others who are currently betting on electronic ink for their devices, one of the best ways to distinguish themselves from Apple is to offer more content over their free wireless connections and to play up the advantages of eInk. In this context, adding a newspaper like the New York Times (which is also a favorite of Steve Jobs and features heavily in Apple's iPad ads and other promotional material) makes a lot of sense. For the newspapers, getting on more devices and selling more subscriptions is simply good business. Sony charges up to $14.99 per month for these subscriptions.

Given that all of these papers could sell their own apps and subscriptions on the iPad as well - and that some of them will be available for free - the availability of newspapers may not be a deciding factor for a lot of potential iPad and e-reader buyers. Hopefully, however, we will also see a lot of innovative newspaper and magazine apps on the iPad. Chances are that these new apps will make today's traditional e-readers seem rather quaint in comparison. The availability of these apps could easily sway a lot of potential e-reader buyers to get an iPad instead.

What is your experience? Do you think e-books and newspapers just look better on eInk? Or are you waiting for the innovative newspaper apps on the iPad that will include video and other interactive content?