Galliano, Westwood help launch fashion "MySpace"
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Iconic British designers Vivienne  Westwood and John Galliano will be online to help aspiring  designers and models around the world as part of a new social  networking Web site, dubbed the "MySpace.com" of fashion.
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Kicking off Oct. 16 in Seattle, this is the social network's first official concert tour--and further differentiates MySpace from rivals by branding it as a pop culture hub.
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Two new Web services launched last week aim to help people tap their friends for tips about where to eat, shop and play. -Leslie Walker
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A niche British fashion and style  magazine is jumping on the user-generated content bandwagon,  dedicating an entire upcoming issue to outside contributions in  partnership with MySpace.com.
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By Anick Jesdanun THE ASSOCIATED PRESS  NEW YORK -- The operators of the online hangout Facebook wanted to help users save time by highlighting changes their friends make to their personal profile pages.
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By Smith, Craig  Leader  Another week, another branded social network. Last week, Marketing reported on fashion retailer French Connection's plan to harness the power of user-generated content through its site www.anewmovement.com.
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A Microsoft Corp.  spin-off on  Tuesday said it will take on Internet social networks  MySpace.com and Facebook.com, touting tools users can buy to  craft better-looking Web pages.
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MySpace will launch its application development platform next week.
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MySpace enters the casual gaming space.
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MySpace.com, the social networking website with 106 million users, is moving into the music business, selling songs from nearly three million unsigned bands. MySpace is the latest company to compete with the iTunes Music Store.
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MySpace, the online social networking  site owned by News Corp (NWSa.N), is in talks with music  companies to launch an advertising-supported free music  service, according to several reports on Wednesday.
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The blog network, which began as a single celebrity gossip property and has since expanded to a whole set of women's lifestyle titles, has acquired social shopping site ShopStyle.
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Servers, e-mail applications, and other less-than-chic combinations of hardware and software typically inhabit the technology realm. Linen is rarely equated with LEDs, while discussing couture along with the 802.11 Wi-Fi standard is almost laughable.However, last Wednesday night at the Boston Museum of Science, the IT industry shed its wonkish ways and demonstrated that it can be in vogue during a fashion show that blended technology with threads. Seamless: Computational Couture featured about 20 designers and design teams from around the world who created garments and accessories influenced by technology.Like its counterparts in New York and Europe, this fashion show featured disc jockeys spinning electronic music, a sports celebrity and, of course, leggy models. And like every fashion show, this iteration featured a runway. A section of the museum with an open floor plan served as the catwalk. Models started their strut on the third floor, took the escalator to the second floor where they sashayed for a bit before boarding another escalator to the ground floor for more sauntering.The colorful fabric, avant-garde designs and crowd of 1,000 all blended harmoniously with technology, making the domain of the IBMs and Googles feel stylish and sexy.&quot;All of the technology is really there,&quot; said Christine Liu, who co-produced the event and helped found the Seamless shows, with this event serving as the third. &quot;The genius behind it is finding the application, the way it&#39;s integrated into the garment, the aesthetics of it, the motivation behind it, and that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re looking for. This sort of composite poetry.&quot;The applications of technology to fashion proved myriad. Featured designs included clothing that powers portable electronic devices, jackets for measuring Wi-Fi signal strength and displaying messages via LED (light-emitting diode) and a ring that applies a tech twist to showy jewelry.Cognoscenti debate whether fashion should place function or form first. Amanda Parkes and Adam Kumpf combine both principles by designing stylish garments that generate their own power. The duo featured a shirt in a dark cooper fabric with an off-the-shoulder neckline, turquoise trim at the neck and what appeared to be decorative buttons around the elbows and waistline. The buttons are actually coin batteries that store voltage created as the wearer moves. The shirt is woven with piezoelectric film fibers around the body&#39;s joints. These fibers convert the mechanical strain created by motion into electrical voltage. The stored power can be used to recharge portable devices, such as an MP3 player.Wi-Fi is used to connect to the Internet, but Jenny Chowdhury, a resident researcher at New York University, also uses the technology to illuminate her line of clothing, 802.11 Apparel. She uses hacked Wi-Fi detectors and LEDs, among other technology, in her designs. The detector picks up signals as a person walks, and rows of LEDs illuminate to indicate the signal&#39;s strength. On the jacket she presented, five horizontal fabric panels with a flower motif ran from the right side of the clothing to its center. The panels, transparent in some sections, allowed the light from strings of blue LEDs to shine through. One glowing row meant a weak signal while a strong signal lit up all five rows.In addition to technology, nature influenced Chowdhury&#39;s design.&quot;Since the beginning of time we&#8217;ve borrowed from the environment to decorate garments,&quot; she said. &quot;Since Wi-Fi is such a large part of the environment now, I thought I would integrate it in that same way. So that&#8217;s why there&#8217;s a floral motif on top of the bars for Wi-Fi.&quot;Fashionistas unanimously support the belief that clothes should make a statement. Barbara Layne&#39;s pair of black linen jackets truly execute on this concept. Messages and graphics are uploaded to the jackets and scrolled across an array of LEDs that are handwoven into the back of the outerwear.The garments can display separate messages individually. However, when magnets in the jackets&#39; cuffs connect, a third, different message scrolls from one jacket to the other. In an homage to weaving and the technological advances it represented, Layne displays the jacket&#39;s electronic components on the back.&quot;We&#39;re exposing the technology because we want to show integration between textiles and technology,&quot; said Layne, who is a professor at Concordia University in Montreal.Rappers sport bling and socialites wear diamonds. Thanks to Markus Kison, technophiles now have their piece of status jewelry. A small horizontal display on his Vanity Ring shows the number of times the wearer&#39;s name has been searched on Google. The ring comes with software that people use to enter their names and link to Google. The ring is updated with the latest tally after it is placed in its accompanying docking station.While this jewelry isn&#39;t on the market, Kison, who studied physics in Germany, cautions that the ring is only for special, Google-worthy people.&quot;So this ring is really about important people,&quot; he said. &quot;It&#8217;s really like this because no one would wear a ring with a thousand hits on it.&quot;Perhaps that is why Manny Delcarmen, a pitcher for the reigning World Series champion baseball team the Boston Red Sox, modeled Kison&#39;s creation.This fashion show may serve as a harbinger of the future, one that combines technology that allows Web access or powers PCs with what people wear to work or a restaurant. After all, Prada designed a cell phone and Marc Jacobs sold iPod holders. Watch the runway to find out.
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The Emmy-winning creators of  television show &quot;My So-Called Life&quot; late on Wednesday became  the latest Hollywood players to launch an Internet program,  partnering with MySpaceTV to Webcast the series &quot;quarterlife.&quot;
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MySpace next week will begin providing APIs to developers looking to create applications to run on the social networking site.
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(InfoWorld) - It may seem like tilting at windmills, but Wallop Technologies expects to shake up the social networking market, currently dominated by entrenched players like News Corp.'s MySpace, Facebook, and Friendster. Wallop is betting that a slick platform based on Adobe Systems' Flash multimedia system, an absence of ads, and a community of third-party developers will set apart its social networking site, which it will announce on Tuesday at Demo Fall in San Diego. A private companyÂ spun off from Microsoft's research unit, Wallop hopes its service will primarily draw people between the ages of 18 and 25 who value its "high-end" yet intuitive user experience, said Karl Jacob, the company's chief executive officer. Wallop's Flash platform is open to developers, so that they can create modules for members to dress up and enhance their social network profiles. Some of these modules will be free. Wallop will share revenue with the developers from the sale of others. Goowy Media, a San Diego startup, will offer several modules for Wallop, and, at least for now, all will be free, said Alex Bard, the company's president and CEO. For Goowy, offering modules for Wallop is a way to promote itself and its Flash-based Webtop application, which includes e-mail, calendar, contacts, games, instant messaging, file storage and optional add-ins. This is the first deal of its kind for Goowy, whose executives decided to feature its work on Wallop after being impressed with the service's user interface, Bard said. "They have created a great new experience," Bard said. "They're not taking a me-too approach to social networking, and that's very smart." To address the privacy and safety concern affecting MySpace, Wallop will provide very granular access features so that members can control who has access to their profiles. Wallop also impressed Jupiter Research analyst Joe Wilcox. "It's a very different type of user experience. Instead of interacting with static Web pages, there's a lot of motion and fluidity in it. It's more alive." Now, it remains to be seen if Wallop will be able to attract a critical mass of people and if enough of them will be willing to spend money on purchasing modules for their profiles, Wilcox said. "It's not just about having a great place. You need to have people there," Wilcox said. Another interesting issue will be whether Wallop ends up competing with Microsoft's Windows Live Spaces blogging service, which has been adding social networking features. Jacob believes Wallop will appeal to a younger, more specific demographic group than does Live Spaces. Microsoft owns a stake in Wallop, which is also backed by investors like Norwest Venture Partners, Bay Partners, and Consor Capital. More information isÂ available here.
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Flock Inc. has added support for the MySpace social network to its Mozilla-based social Web browser.