uzyn.com

Leaving for Barcamp Malaysia

U-Zyn Chua — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:51:16 -0400

The whole team of Widgeous will be going to Kuala Lumpur later this evening for Barcamp Malaysia.

We will be presenting “Widgeous - Changing the Way People Communicate” tomorrow (25 July 2008) at 10am at Lecture Room III, xTrain Sdn Bhd, Megan Avenue 1, Jalan Tun Razak, Kuala Lumpur.

Along with the event, we will also be launching Widgeous Hackathon and open our API for the first time.

So, if you are a developer looking to extend your web app to devices outside of web, do check us out tomorrow - either by meeting us at Barcamp Malaysia or checking out our site tomorrow.

Drop me an email if you would like to meet up in KL: chua@uzyn.com

[More details on Barcamp, check out the Barcamp Malaysia wiki.]

Ping.sg and Me

U-Zyn Chua — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 07:43:43 -0400

Ping.sg was started as a bedroom project by myself. I was the sole designer, coder, and investor. [More on the history of Ping.sg]

It has been 2 years since the project has started and the Singapore blogger community has seen a very steady and promising growth over the years. Membership and readership counts have increased steadily over time.

I created Ping.sg to be a platform that helps to connect local bloggers and blog readers. So far I believe it has been pretty successful at doing that. Occasionally, we do see some commercial sites or adult sites trying to abuse the site to gain traffic for their commercial benefits. Thanks to the reports from the community, we have been able to cope with such abuse by banning such sites from Ping.sg, thus retaining the relevance of the community - aggregating latest and interesting blog posts for bloggers and blog readers.

Over the years since Ping.sg was launched, we have seen a lot of good posts by bloggers and the growth, not just in size but in significance, of the Singapore blogosphere. We have also seen a fair share of ‘blog wars’ among the bloggers, attacking each other.

Personally, I am deeply saddened by such acts, but so far I have refrained myself from making any comments on such issues. I consider such issues as micro-level issues and I as the founder and sole developer of Ping.sg should not make any comments on the internal fights among the members. My focus is always on the macro-level of things, ie. to further improve Ping.sg and to enhance Ping.sg to be a better platform for bloggers to follow and connect with each other.

As the 2nd Anniversary Party Organizing Committee of which I am also part of, along with Daphne, is busy trying to organize the celebration party, I have already started engaging a designer to further improve the layout and usability of Ping.sg and I have also started working on several features which I hope would help the bloggers connect to each other and make possible to follow the now-pretty-rapid postings of new blogs. I hope to unveil these features, packaged with Ping.sg 2.0 at the upcoming event.

So far, Ping.sg is in the red, financially. Yes, there are advertisements on Ping.sg, but they are barely enough to cover the expenses of Ping.sg, don’t even mention my salary. If you have known me personally, you would know that I am involved in a lot of projects and my girlfriend, Sek Ling would know how busy I am everyday of the week. I am working more than 8 hours a day trying to meet the deadlines of my clients’ projects, my other startup - Widgeous, and yet I’m still trying my best to squeeze out some time to do some development and maintenance work for Ping.sg simply because I love the community, and I enjoy reading blogs and seeing it grow. I sincerely would also like to thank Daphne for volunteering to be a community manager as I find less and less time for myself to provide for the social-side of the community. She is currently holding a day job herself, a very stressful one, and yet still trying her very best to interact with the community and provide for the community. She’s doing all of these without getting paid a single cent. Everytime I reminded her of how grateful I am towards what she has done and hoping that I could compensate her enough for her work, she would push me aside claiming she enjoys doing what she’s doing and that she loves the community. If you know Daphne personally, you would know how much Ping.sg means to her. Her life now almost fully revolves around the people of Ping.sg.

Of course, being an active community, the members, core or not, have played very significant roles in it. Countless, or I would say almost all, of meetups and activities are organized by members themselves. Being in quite a few of the meetups, of course missing quite a few as well, I have always enjoyed interacting with the bloggers and I am proud to say that I have made so many blogger friends throughout the course of running Ping.sg. I would also like to thank the community for being so supportive of this project and keep blogging. I procrastinate a lot during my work and you know what I do when I procrastinate - read your blogs!

Of the misunderstandings that have been happening in Ping.sg recently, a few users have accused Daphne and I for not taking any actions against the bloggers for their “mis-blogs”. On top of my stance of being indifferent on the internal micro-level “fights”, it has also never be the intention of Ping.sg to start controlling what the bloggers say. Even if we want, we are absolutely powerless to do that, unless of course we start screening each and every blog posts before being published. Ping.sg is a platform to share, and never to control the blogosphere. It is merely a tool for the bloggers.

I will stay focused in my work to improve Ping.sg for the bloggers in the region. My rewards for running the site is seeing the blossom of the blogosphere and seeing how much bloggers are making friends from the platform and do a lot of interesting collaboration projects and all.

I love Ping.sg and I will not hesitate to take any actions to stop any unappreciative users from trying to break the site and the community.

Twitter Killed My Blog

U-Zyn Chua — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 20:17:02 -0400

Twitter killed my blog.

Now I am only able to blog in 140 character or less.

I can’t construct sentences anymore.

Needless to say paragraphs.

Sucks.

BTW, I am starting to love the Widgeous office guys more and more. Love the more-than-weekly geek talk with the Ridzuan, Kah Wee and Aen.

Presenting Tomorrow at Barcamp Singapore II

U-Zyn Chua — Tue, 20 May 2008 20:01:44 -0400

I’ll be presenting Widgeous publicly for the first time with Ridzuan tomorrow at Barcamp Singapore II.

Not only that, Widgeous will also go live some time tomorrow. Yes, we are finally going to be live. And I’m glad we beat Duke Nukem Forever and Chinese Democracy.

Now I have crazy amount of work to catch up with…

… on top of preparing for the presentation.

Special thanks also to Kah Wee and Aen who have also been working hard with us in polishing our product and site.

My Podcast Debut

U-Zyn Chua — Mon, 05 May 2008 22:38:29 -0400

These guys are fast. We were only doing the recording last Saturday and the Tech65 crews has got the episode edited, mastered and published!

Do check out my podcast debut with Daniel and NTT at:
http://www.tech65.org/2008/05/05/65bits-episode-69-the-one-with-the-pingfather/

I know I speak really bad compare to the experienced crews, but do spare your LOLs.

It was a really great experience for me and it was such a pleasure to be able to do a show with the great guys at Tech65. Let’s hope they’ll invite me back again some day. :)

Anyway, do subscribe to 65 Bits - the best podcast in Singapore, not just for technology only, but for all podcasts. (Well maybe cause I’m only listening to tech and poker podcasts).

Back to Desktop Feed Reader

U-Zyn Chua — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 18:28:20 -0400

It started with desktop feed reader, but I made the switch about 2 years ago to Google Reader, thinking it would solve the problem of syncing not just the list of subscribed feeds but also the read/unread statuses of the feeds between different computers. Now, I’m back to desktop feed reader.

Several reasons for the switch:

I no longer read feeds on multiple computers, but only on a laptop and iPhone.
No more ~1-2 sec wait for switching between feeds.
This is the main reason for the switch. The ~1-2 sec wait when I switch between feeds in Google Reader constantly lose my attention. During the 1-2 sec wait, I often find myself browsing other sites like Ping.sg and eventually even end up getting stuck in the quicksand of Wikipedia. Yes, I’m a wikipedia-addict. And yes, my attention span has shorten tremendously probably due to the over-usage of computers.
Managing feeds is fun now
With desktop feed reader, managing feeds is so much fun now. Ctrl+click, select multiple feeds, unsubscribe. That’s so much more efficient than having to manage one by one.

Now I’m rediscovering the joy of feeds reading after I’ve almost stopped reading feeds due to the frustration of using a web-based feed reader.

Even though the web apps has revolutionize my reliance on a lot of desktop apps, sometimes the speed and ease-of-use of a desktop app still beats the no-download-requirement of web apps.

Logical Fallacies

U-Zyn Chua — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 20:50:35 -0400

Interesting article:
Logical Fallacies

Learn how to argue properly, or spot false arguments.

Very well-written article on logical fallacies by Marilyn vos Savant - the person with the highest IQ as listed on Guinness Book of Records.

Of course you don’t need that much IQ to understand the article, but do try to spot how/where each of the example arguments presented are invalid.

Odd Time Signature

U-Zyn Chua — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 03:14:57 -0400

This is exactly the main reason why I love progressive rock so much.

The flexibility of it all, not just in terms of melody or rhythm but also in terms of the whole structure of a song.

Preparing for Taiwan Trip

U-Zyn Chua — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 10:31:42 -0400

I’ll be leaving for Taiwan this coming Thu with Sek Ling for a break.

Some questions:

1. Which prepaid mobile should I use? I would love to have GPRS/EDGE on my iPhone while I’m there for email checking and Google maps while on the move. Not really for intensive Internet usage as my hotel room should have Internet access.

2. Thinking of getting myself an ASUS Eee PC if it’s cheaper over there. Any advice on where I should be going for the best electronic bargains?

3. Anyone wants an Eee PC as well?

Thanks.

Ping.sg is Now A Gaming Platform

U-Zyn Chua — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 03:14:02 -0400

Ping.sg has decided to concentrate on making the Singapore bloggers happy by changing our focus from a community meta blog to a community gaming platform for bloggers.

After working almost non-stop from 1:00AM to now, I’m proud to announce the first Ping.sg game since the change of direction of the site - “Whose Ping Is It Anyway?”

Try out the game now.

Related: Ping.sg Press Release

Felix Geisendörfer Meet

U-Zyn Chua — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:14:58 -0400

Just came back from one of the most interesting meetings in a while. I’ve just came back from meeting Felix Geisendörfer, one of the core contributors to CakePHP.

I’ve been following Felix’ blog for years now I think (since CakePHP beta days) and his blog is one of the most interesting blogs that I’ve followed. I confessed I’ve learned a lot of things from reading his blog. I learned that he was coming to Singapore a few weeks ago and I contacted him to schedule a meet up.

The meet up was really interesting and inspiring. Thanks to Michael Cheng, for inviting the Singapore PHP User Groups members over as well.

After the dinner session and a lot of chats with him and other attendees, Felix presented one of his projects, Posttask and demonstrated some of features of jQuery. I haven’t been checking out stuffs much these days due to my work (I guess I will need to reduce my workload, or learn to procrastinate less. Much less.) and in his brief introduction, I’ve decided to pick up jQuery and probably switch from Prototype (picked up during early CakePHP days) to jQuery soon.

Interesting stuff, like Felix today, I better get working on Widgeous soon so that it can be shown to Felix this coming Friday.

Thanks also to Michael Lim, who has shared a lot of interesting stuffs with me, especially Adobe Flex and Capistrano.

uzyn.com Relaunched: Goodbye Wordpress, Hello Chyrp

U-Zyn Chua — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 13:41:57 -0400

uzyn.com is back. After quite a long hiatus.

I’ve been wanting to ditch Wordpress for quite awhile, for its bloat and its complicatedness but haven’t been able to find something simple but does not lack in essential blogging requirements/features. At a point in time, I even wanted to write my own blog engine, a simple one, but considering my current workload, that is definitely out of the question.

Until a few days ago, I discovered Chyrp. Chyrp is lightweight, yet very extensible and complete. The bare installation does not even have a commenting system, which makes a lot of sense because some blogs do not require commenting system at all. The goodness of Chyrp comes mainly in this extension - Tumblr Pack - with the installation of the feather, now you get to post not just usual blog but other types of content similar to a Tumblelog. There are more extensions available and I have yet to explore them all.

I will also be playing around with Chyrp over the next couple of days and further customize this blog. But so far, I would say Chyrp is the right blogging platform for me for now simply because of its lightweight.

Simple is right.

Clear The Webs

U-Zyn Chua — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 02:06:57 -0500

This blog hasn’t been updated for months. It’s a shame.

Time to clear away the webs (spider-, not WW-) and give this blog a facelift.

I’ve decided to relaunch this blog in about a week. With the new design, I’m sure that I will get back to frequent blogging again.

Overwhelmed - Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

U-Zyn Chua — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 02:10:32 -0500

Realized that I haven’t been blogging much about myself for awhile now. The main culprit would be microblog (twitter). Ever since I started microblogging, I have been putting my thoughts on things at the moment directly to my Twitter and would not have kept it to blog when I have the time.

Another reason for my lack of blogging would also due to my work. Yes, I am busy, so are a lot of us. But more than busy, I am getting rather overwhelmed with my work and to-be-made decisions. If you have been emailing me about freelance work, you would know that I have stopped accepting freelance projects for a few months now at least for the time being as I am currently involved in a few long-term projects and also managing my startups.

Everyday, there are more tasks that I insert, or pull from yesterday’s, onto my to-do list than I can complete them. There are just too much work for me to handle everyday, and that’s also after I have totally taken out hobby (poker) from my routine. I have stopped playing poker for more than a month now, online or otherwise.

Besides tasks and work, recently I have also been thinking a lot about decisions that I have to make for my startups. Should I take on this expansion path, should the business be taking on this marketing plan, should I consider taking in investments, should I spend my limited coding time to implement this. There are simply too many decisions to be made recently and with my easily-worried attitude, I get overwhelmed sometimes trying to organize my thoughts.

Recently, more often than not, I find myself starting on a task, working on it, only to be switched over to another task about 3 minutes into the earlier one. The same would happen on the 2nd task as well, and so on.

Maybe I am involved in too many things now, maybe I am not. I know a lot of people are involved in more things than I am and yet they can still remain pretty organized.

Anyway, I will be taking a month of non-pay leave from one of my jobs to catch up on things, especially for those on my businesses. Most importantly, in that one month, with one-less commitment, I hope I am also able to think more clearly and make good crucial decisions and plans.

I have been really lucky to have really understanding bosses. They have not only been extremely understanding of my situation and my involvement in my startups, they have also been lending helping hands as much as they could to aid me. I would also like to thank them for being so nice and understanding.

BusinessWeek Asia’s Top 25 Young Entrepreneurs

U-Zyn Chua — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 18:08:49 -0500

I couldn’t believe myself when I first learned about the news that I was chosen by BusinessWeek as one of the Asia’s Top 25 Young Entrepreneurs.

Until today, I’ve never consider myself as a successful entrepreneur. Even though I’ve started quite a few sites and services that have gained me some recognition, I’m mainly doing them for my love for technology and the love of making things. I enjoy the challenges of making technology useful for people. Until now, I’m still starting up new businesses (the latest one being Widgeo.us) with the core value of making technology the way people (or most people) would want it.

The company that’s being featured on Businessweek - Ping.sg runs almost entirely on the basis that the site is built for the community, thus the community would decide on how they want it to be. I love to see that things I can build are being used by a lot of people, and that people are loving it. That, to me, is more valuable than any amount of revenue that I can generate. Maybe my last statement is against the name of being an entrepreneur, personally I’m always considering myself an enthusiastic technologist than an entrepreneur. This is also the reason why I am directly involved in technological development for all of my sites/companies so far.

I am flattered by being recognized by one of the top business magazines in the world as one of the Asia’s top 25 young entrepreneurs. I am not who I am today alone, thanks to everyone who have supported me all along.

Congratulations to all my friends who have made it to the list too. Surprisingly, I personally know at least 4 other top Asia’s young entrepreneurs.

And, I would really appreciate if you could vote for me.

For now, I will continue to build more and better things. Anyway, it’s not so much the desire to do business but the love of technology is what getting me into all of these.

Security in PHP

U-Zyn Chua — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 11:48:57 -0500

Last night’s talk was great. Not only that the talk was well-received, I did learn some tricks from the audience as well. That’s where I really love technical discussions, we all learn from one another.

Here are the slides that I’ve promised. It’s done with Google Docs. If you want to know, the slides builder is great, but if you’re using it from Singapore, the lag is sometimes a little too much and occasionally (I should say more than occasionally) you will get kicked out of the app for saving failure.

Launch Slides

Thanks to all of you who attended the talk, especially those who were asking and sharing things during my session. Thanks to Michael for putting in so much effort to organize the PHP event. If you are a PHP programmer and are based in Singapore, do sign up for Singapore PHP User Group.

Feel free to leave some tips/comments/feedback in the comments for this post. :)

Updated at November 20, 2007:

Thanks to Singapore PHP User Group for the video.

PHP Singapore User Group November 2007 Event

U-Zyn Chua — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 01:01:03 -0500

Thanks to Michael Cheng for starting the PHP Singapore User Group and putting in so much effort in organizing this November meet up.

There’ll be 3 talks during the event and I’ll be speaking for one of them, on Security in PHP.

I’ll be sharing some security measures that web developers should be looking out for when writing applications. If you have some input on this topic that you think I should share, please drop me a mail at chua@uzyn.com, or you can also attend the event and raise it up as well. I will appreciate your input. We should all share and learn from each other.

Please RSVP for the event.

See ya’ll this coming Wednesday.

Mobile Warrior

U-Zyn Chua — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 17:13:48 -0400

During those days when Wireless@SG decides to play a trick on me again, I’m so glad to have Broadband on Mobile. It almost never fails to deliver.

I’ve been having Broadband on Mobile 10GB plan for awhile now, but have not been able to use it on my 3G phone with my laptop as I’m using the SIM on my iPhone. Not only that iPhone doesn’t support 3G connection, it cannot, like my good old Nokia 6280, functions as a modem to my laptop too.

Now that I’ve got Multi-SIM, everything’s working fine again. One SIM in my iPhone, another in my good old Nokia 3G phone. I’m a mobile warrior again. I can even make (or lose) money playing mobile poker on my phone while on MRT.

Damn this sounds so much like payperpost.

No, it is not!

I’m typing this post in Starbucks at Suntec where there is Wireless@SG access point but a non-working DHCP.

Come to think of it, maybe this is the plan all along. Had all Wireless@SG connections are working great, who would’ve signed up for the mobile broadband services from the 3 telcos?

My New Business Cards

U-Zyn Chua — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 01:30:40 -0400

My new business cards for a company I co-founded, widgeo.us.

Get them from me before they run out.

Free Burma!

U-Zyn Chua — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 11:34:59 -0400

International Bloggers’ Day for Burma on the 4th of October

This is the least I could do for the people of Burma.