I had long been fascinated with all things African. It is the only continent where you hear more about genocides than any actual development. It is quite unfair because there are actually peaceful nations in Africa and a lot of creative development goes on there because of the poor infrastructure of many nations.
I have been reading a lot of Science Fiction/Fantasy books lately (as you might see on my list of books read).
Today we meet Chua U-Zyn who is now very well known for developing Ping.sg, a Singapore community portal (and blog aggregator) that everybody loves. Ping.sg has been growing in prominence ever since its launch and it is even more surprising to note that the author and the owner of the site is the freshly graduated U-Zyn! Reading the bio, you might see similar patterns with the other two web 2.0 developers - the thirst to create solutions to solve a problem.
1. What drives you to create applications/portals like lasthalo, ping.sg, gratisvibes?
Most of the applications that I created personally were done because of my interest, passion and by realizing the needs of certain applications. LastHalo was created because a few of my friends were using Haloscan for commenting service on Blogspot blogs and they were having a hard time keeping track of latest comments. Blogspot had no built-in commenting service at that time and Haloscan did not have any means of keeping track of latest comments easily then.
Ping.sg was created when I saw a need for Singapore bloggers to have an online presence that we can call home. I wanted the site to be as much community-driven as possible and not merely be a local blog listing. I started working on it without knowing that it would reach the current mass popularity.
Gratisvibes came about as a result of my passion in music. I was involved in the electronic music scene at that time and I listened to a lot of Creative-Commons-licensed electronic music albums. I realized that a lot of the CC-licensed artists and albums that don't get much attention as they should, so I thought of creating a site to help promote free music and Creative Commons. Two of my friends are also helping me out in the site.
2. How much time do you devote to ping.sg?
It depends. As I am a freelancer, my time is pretty flexible. When I am not that occupied with my job, I devote a lot of time to develop and maintain Ping.sg and sometimes when I am rushing to meet deadlines, I wouldn't be able to devote even an hour per day. So far the Ping.sg community has been really helpful in helping me maintaining the site. Whenever there is an abuse or they discover a bug, someone in the community would always report to me as soon as possible.
3. What technologies do you use on ping.sg?
Ping.sg was built entirely on open source software. Ping.sg runs on LAMP and is built on CakePHP, a rapid application development framework for PHP. It was among the first few applications that I built on CakePHP.
On top of the server-side scripting language, Javascript and AJAX of Ping.sg are largely built on Prototype, a Javascript framework and Script.aculo.us is used for some animation on the site.
4. How long does it take for you to get any web app off the ground?
It depends on the complexity of the application, thus it can range from 1 day to as long as a 2 months. I built the RSS feed creator bot for TODAY in 1 day, but took about 1 month to build Ping.sg beta. Ping.sg is still largely under development and I am still continuing to build it from time to time. Ping.sg today is totally different from what it was like during the beta stage, thus you can say that I took almost a year now to build Ping.sg.
5. How many people currently use ping.sg, lasthalo, gratisvibes?
Ping.sg has about 700 registered users at the time of writing with about 18K pinged entries. It is still a long road ahead to get most Singapore bloggers to be part of Ping.sg. LastHalo has about 1,000 registered users. The project is somewhat redundant now as Haloscan has finally come up with an official Latest Comments Tracker. Gratisvibes has about 110 feed subscribers at the time of writing. Since it is mainly a blog, and and it doesn't require any registrations to read it is very hard for us to track the number of visitors to Gratisvibes.
6. What is the plan for the future of ping.sg?
There is still a lot of features that I am looking at adding to Ping.sg. Ping.sg is an ongoing project for me. Some of the features that I would like to add on Ping.sg are:
With the extra features, hopefully Ping.sg will be able to gain the interest of many more Singapore bloggers.
7. What challenges do you face in developing web apps?
To me, one of the challenges in developing web apps is to create a good user-interface for each feature and functionality of an app. I noticed that sometimes developers get to engrossed in writing a good working back-end while not putting in enough effort to create a good UI that reflects the amazing features available in the back-end. I usually think from the user's point-of-view, e.g. how would a user, with no knowledge of how an app works use it? and how he/she can use it without reading any or minimal instructions? Ironically, even web designers face the same challenge, even though they are directly responsible for designing the UI. I have seen quite a few web designers who choose aesthetics over usability of an app.
8. Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently with your apps, given the new technologies now?
Generally I am the one who is quick to adopt to new technology. I should be among the first in Singapore to have adopted CakePHP as I see the potential in it. So as a whole, generally, I believe I am doing the best I could with the knowledge that I have during the time of my development to adhere to all the standards.
9. What do you think you would be doing next? What do you see in your future as you develop for the web?
I just completed my undergraduate studies and am looking forward to my work as a full time web developer. On top of my freelance work, I will also build apps that pique my interest. None of the applications I created have made me enough money to even cover my server expenses but I still built them anyway as I love making things and I will continue to do so during my free time.
Of course I hope that some of my personal projects will soon make some money. And hopefully enough to not just cover the server charges but also enough for me to make a living from. If that can be realized, I would be able to eventually reduce the amount of freelance work that I am doing to develop more innovative ideas of myself or of anyone's just for the fun of it regardless of money-making opportunities.
10. You have recently given your final exams for undergrad studies and there is not many students who are all about creating applications/freelancing while still studying. What drives you to do it and how did you manage it with the studies?
When I was a student, I was more of a full time app developer and a part-time student rather than the other way round even though, on paper, I was a full-time student. I was a really lazy student. My friends hardly saw me in school except for labs, projects and of course exams.
I guess I didn't really manage my studies well. I'm keeping my fingers crossed now, just hoping that I could pass my final exams and finally graduate.
11. Ping.sg is a real hit among the singaporeans. What I noticed in the ideas section was the largest number of votes was for the idea of banning any "sex blogs", ping.sg is based on giving each blog equal opportunity to shine and the idea of banning "sex blogs" seems to be contradicting that premise. What is your take?
I have not banned any blogs that are discussing about sex, not including pornography, and as the founder of Ping.sg, I want to stick to the policy as much as possible, i.e., treat each blogger equally. Even though the 'idea' is currently on top of the list of ideas in Ping.sg, the amount of votes only represent a small part of the Ping.sg users thus it cannot be assumed to be the voice of the whole Ping.sg population. Of course, this is Singapore, Ping.sg will always adhere to the local law.
Technorati Tags: web standards, ping.sg, web2, lasthalo, u-zyn
Starhub has advertised for long about its broadband 100Mbps pipe ("Feel the rush of 100 Mbps"). And given that I work extensively online on servers that are quite remote, this was like a dream come true. I was one of the earliest subscribers to this scheme.
However, since then, I have got much to regret about the service. I have had my modems replaced twice and each time I had to give up working for 2 days - wait for the service man to come and replace the modem.
Today, however, it got worse. The modem just got replaced a few hours ago, and the new modem now stopped working. Thankfully, after much firm talk over the phone with an intelligent customer service guy on Friday (before the modem got replaced), I got them to provide me with the 100 Mbps internet service on my Digital Voice modem and this was still available - so I had it moved to my workspace and connected the router from there. So everything works - except for the loss of my landline.
Of course, you can imagine i was WILD. The customer service made it worse when I called after the newly replaced modem broke down. He refused to give me a time by when it will be fixed. He kept insisting the problem was with the signal cable point and not with the modem - but the digital voice cable modem works flawlessly when connected at the same point. I suspect, the problem is AGAIN with the modem - which would make it the FOURTH modem I have got replaced in the space of 2 months.
I think it is the worst service I have got in Singapore so far. And to think I am subscribed to the maxonline "Ultimate" which is the most expensive of the lot.
If you see this error when you (as I have) been innocently downloading a 2 MB attachment from a client - fear not (or fear the worst) as this is the dumb little gmail that is creating a havoc in our lives. Apparently, they have made a mistake in attempting to solve the problem of spammers and have disabled hundreds of accounts. This is what we get in trusting google (the home of the uber-nerds) to be smart enough to not do such mistakes.
This is where you can get the lowdown: Is Your Gmail Account Disabled?
Interestingly, there is no account of this mistake anywhere on their site. Wait till one of the reporters get to suffer from it :)
This is not an oxymoron anymore :)
I went to the web standards meet up yesterday and that was definitely clear. There were people working on making sites compliant. What is notable and worth showering flowers of praises are the efforts of people in the system (like Lucian and Vanessa) to make sites compliant and lead efforts to create a community of like-minded individuals. Truly, in the service of the people I say!
Also managed to see and speak to Rambling Librarian - and I guiltily thought about how I am no longer painting :(.
Coleman managed to get a "symbol" for web standards - though it might be disagreeable for some. If you don't comply - you are Hitler, if you are AAA compliant you are Mother Teresa!
(you can see where YOU would stand in this good-evil continuum chart).
Nick Pan spoke about how he is using web standards in his company for websites. I later asked him on why there were still some inline styles and some tables - which he told me was part of the CMS which their company had no control of. Thankfully, in my few months of being a designer, I never came across a client using obnoxious CMSes which dont validate!
Also present was Herryanto, the famous creator of BookJetty - Thank YOU for the most useful app ever!
Now, the plan is to meet at least once a month and get things going with regards to standards. Perhaps, it will also be a good idea to bring along clients, partners, etc who have no clue about web standards and spend the first half an hour introducing web standards before we get all technical and start sharing our work!
I will also be attending Russ Weakley's CSS workshop on Feb 8 as well as BarCamp this saturday. Woot!
I forgot to mention, in the excitement of knowing web standards enthusiasts, about the talk that W3C Michael Smith gave on Opera and web standards - which was pretty basic, but I got to know that Opera will have a firebug replacement this year. YAY! Then I can stop using Firefox already!
Pradeep has been plying me with a heavy dose of Microsoft parodies that had me laughing in splits. So, in gratitude, and for your daily dose of humor, I guide you to Pradeep's excellent directory of such ads/ parodies.
After the untoward incident happened to Xiaxue, I considered the need for backing up my website automatically, so that I am not left with backups that are three years old. My search for good backup systems took me automatically to del.icio.us, where a tag search resulted in Full Sync.Full Sync is everything I wanted. Automatic Backups, checks for changes, regular expressions to eliminate certain folders from backups, and free. So here is a small tutorial on how to use FullSync for automatic backups.What FullSync is not:It works only if you have FTP access to the remote server where your website is hosted. Otherwise you are better off putting task reminders in your mobile phone to backup your website every week.
I came across Lena when I did Image Processing and Neural Networks in NTU. A very intelligent friend of mine knew the source of the photograph and told me that it was the photograph from playboy.
I was hooked. I mean, when was the last time science and playboy came together? I was very curious to know the full story. Now, Lenna.org has the full story and a link to the original picture (the picture contains nudity).
And what's more, she is alive and the old sexy looks are gone and in place is a glow and beauty that grows with age! Welcome back Lena!
P.S. There is an internet censor body in Singapore! I wasnt allowed access to one of the links in the lenna.org pages. Gives me this:
Due to Media Development Authority (MDA) regulation, this website that you are trying to access is a restricted website.
Deepak has put up a tragicomic and informative article on recovering your data if you "accidentally" format your partitions or delete data. I quiver with fear even imagining doing it!
