My latest past time is playing online chess on my iPod Touch. Chess with Friends is a free game created for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The way chess is played at Chess with Friends is not the traditional method where you finish the game over a few hours if not less.

Chess with Friends is a type of correspondence chess where the game is played with friends online or random opponents with an iPhone or iPod Touch and wifi connection. A game can last from a few hours to a few days or even weeks.

Here is how Chess with Friends work. First I download and install Chess with Friends on my iPod Touch or iPhone. Then I create a standard account but Chess with Friends will ask you for your mobile no. You can decline giving out your mobile no. if you do not wish to. It is optional. If you decide otherwise, Chess with Friends will allow opponents to contact you on your mobile. In a way, Chess with Friends is sort of a social network for chess enthusiasts.

After you have created an account, you login and you can start playing chess. You can choose a friend from your contact list, search for a friend using their username, let the computer select a random opponent for you or stick to a local game with “Pass and Play”. I tried Pass and Play the first time and the problem with Pass and Play is you need a friend in the same location to play chess with. You make one move, pass the iPhone/iPod Touch to your friend to make the next move, then you repeat the sequence.

Since I didn’t know anyone in my contact list who are interested in Chess with Friends and couldn’t think of any username to search for, I tried the Random opponent. With random opponent, you wait for the computer to find you a random player who is also waiting to play chess. This can some times take more than a few minutes. Once a random opponent is found, you get on with the game. With this mode of play, you or your opponent can make a move then get on with whatever you want to do and then go back and make another move a few minutes later, a day later, a week later or longer. So this means you will could be playing the game for as long as it takes.

I started a game last evening and played less than 5 moves then went on to watch American Idol then played another couple of moves and went to bed. I resumed playing chess with my random opponent an hour ago. While I was out this morning, I started another game with another random opponent and we are still playing the game. Chess with Friends allow you to create multiple games and you can play more than one game with different opponents. As you are playing the game, you can also chat (type-chat) with your random opponent.

I think Chess with Friends can be very addictive. Imagine waiting for time to pass in the airport and you are thinking what you should do. You can play Chess with Friends or have a chat with your random opponent about anything while making a few chess moves. If you lose your wifi connection, you can pick up the game when you arrive at your destination. At the same time you are exercising your brain since generally we only use around 10% of our brain at most times.

So anyone of you out there who are looking for a chess opponent, search for ashchuan and let’s see how long it will take to finish a game of chess.

This video is actually quite good and adds humour to the social networking revolution because 9 out of 10 of us have signed up with some social network in recent years. And it is the weekend so we should have some fun. Hope you like the video as much as I did and he can actually sing!

I signed up for a Twitter account some time ago but didn’t really get into it. Why? I don’t really know why. I guess it didn’t appear as an interesting Web 2.0 application at that time. I was spending more time on Facebook, Orkut and other social networks but today I decided to give Twitter a go. I login to Twitter (I amazingly login without forgetting my password ) and started using it just for fun.

What is Twitter?
Twitter is not a social network. It is more of a micro blog. I say that because you can twit as much as you like as long as it is 140 characters or less per twit. It is amazingly simply and straight forward to use and quoting Chris Pirillo, Twitter is organised chaos. As a Twitter, you can follow other Twitters and get updates whenever they twit. Other Twitters can also follow your updates.

How do you Twit?
You can twit directly from the Twitter website, use IM, mobile phone SMS or install a mobile Twitter application or a desktop Twitter widget on your computer and use it to twit whenever you want.

Twitter resource
Caroline Middlebrook has written a comprehensive guide on Twitter called The Big Juicy Twitter Guide. Read about it here.

Chris Pirillo’s video Follow me on Twitter is available on YouTube.com

Twitter in plain English by Lee LeFever gives you an overview picture of what Twitter does.

Follow me on Twitter
My twitter profile: http://twitter.com/ashchuan

There are hundreds of Facebook applications available and honestly I find some Facebook applications are fun and others annoying, especially when I get hundreds of invites to install apps that I would only use once. While reading my email today, I stumbled upon a list of useful Facebook applications on zdnet.com that will help improve productivity in your business and career. The author of the article, Aseem Kishore shared his choice of Facebook applications for business and career enhancement. It is quite an interesting list of Facebook applications and the applications range from office suite to project management app, file sharing instant messaging in Facebook.

Take a look at the list of Facebook applications:

Zoho Online Office Suite
Have all your office files – documents, spreadsheets, presentations – online for free. Access them from inside Facebook (also from anywhere). Share/collaborate easily and instantly with your network of friends. No more storing of your office files in your computer & emailing them to your friends to-and-fro.

Slates
Publish almost anything in almost any language. Styled text, images, movies, audio & links embedded in Blogs, stories, poetry, lyrics, notes, journals, diaries, travel logs, books and more.

My List
Create any kind of list (to-do lists, movies you saw in college, books you want to buy, grocery lists, invitee lists and so on. Share it with every one you know; let them add or edit your lists.

SlideShare
Share presentations with friends using SlideShare. SlideShare supports many formats including PowerPoint (ppt, pps), Open Office (odp), and PDF.

To Do List
To do list helps you organize all the stuff you have to do, in a super simple way. The are no hard to find, or hidden features, the application is very easy to use, and will help you organize your lists.

TooDooz Project Management
Toodooz is an online project management Facebook app that helps you coordinate, prioritize, and manage projects.

Ayos iShare
File sharing Facebook app. It is 100% free and gives you a nice 2GB of storage space.

Facebook Files
Another file storage and file sharing application.

DivShare
Yet another file sharing application. You can share documents, photos, music, and video by sending them to each friend individually, posting them to your profile, or by adding them to your news feed.

MyDocuments
MYDocuments is a simple application that lets you post any type of document to share with friends.

30 Boxes
Online calendar application. The 30 Boxes Facebook app also includes SMS reminders, a built-in to-do list, and integrates with blogs, Flickr, and more.

My Google Calendar
My Google Calendar is a very simple application that allows you to embed your Google Calendar into your Facebook profile and Application/Business page.

my!TeamPlanner
my!TeamPlanner provides tools to organize, coordinate, and collaborate on any activity for all of your team information.

myOffice
Another collaboration application.

Babuki Desktop Instant Messenger
Babuki IM lets you chat to your Facebook, MSN, AIM, Yahoo!, Gtalk, ICQ, Livejournal and MySpace friends from within Facebook.

Meeting Room
Meeting Room enables live, face-to-face meetings using your webcam where you can share photos, files, drawings, and more on a whiteboard with friends.

LinkedIn Contacts
Allows you to view and share your LinkedIn contacts.

TravelersTable
TravelersTable is a free online tool to meet people offline, whether you are at work, traveling, or at home.

Microsoft Dynamics Connect Beta
You can use Microsoft Dynamics Connect to discover, connect and collaborate with other business professionals.

Jobster Career Network
Get personalized job alerts based on your career interests.

Jobs Indeed
Job search application.

Yahoo HotJobs
Another job search application.

Smart Links
Facebook application that enables you to organize your friends, groups, applications, and external links into folders.

FindMe
For Blackberry or Windows Mobile Smartphone users, FindMe Facebook app will let your colleagues know where you are and find out where they are personally, automatically and securely.

SplashCast
SplashCast allows you to create your own personal multimedia channel with podcasts, videos, documents, photos, and music.

ClassNotes
Class Notes is a Facebook app that takes advantage of the cool features of scanR. scanR turns your phone into a scanner, copier, or fax. It allows you to take a picture of documents using your cell phone camera and sends it you as a PDF.

I wrote a post about Peopleized.com a couple of months ago. If you have not read the post, Using Peopleized to promote your blog, Peopleized.com is a social network that uses interviews as the mechanism to encourage its members to network with each other.

Peopleized.com’s business model allows the members to find registered people, conduct an interview with them and use the interviews to promote yourself.

Business Model
1. Find people
2. Give Interviews
3. Get Promoted

I was interviewed by Mert Erkal on Peopleized.com when I participated in Bloghology, a free ezine published by Mert. The interview is posted below.

Web Technology by Ash Chuan
Peopleized by: merkal2005 – Thursday, 03 April 2008

Read the interesting story of Ash Chuan, and monitor her blog to be updated on Web Technology

merkal2005: Hi Ash, please introduce yourself to Bloghology readers

ashchuan: My name is Ashley Chuan. I grew up in sunny Malaysia and moved to London, England in 1994 to complete my university education. I have been living in England since. I work as an Application Developer and enjoy what I do. My interests are in photography, blogging, travel and cooking.

merkal2005: When did you start playing with computers?

ashchuan: When I was given my first computer, the Apple IIe and I learnt to write sofware in BASIC and I got hooked on software programming.

merkal2005: How do you earn your living?

ashchuan: I earn my living working in a 9 to 5 job doing software development. Having said that it is my dream to be able to earn a living blogging.

merkal2005: What is the purpose of your blogging?

ashchuan: I enjoy writing about web technology and having a blog allows me to share and learn from other bloggers. I started to blog seriously more than 3 months ago and discovered that making money from blogging is an extremely challenging task. I have no problems with the technical aspect of setting up a blog, etc. but I learnt that being a blogger does not necessarily make me a good marketer and I am still learning.

merkal2005: Please tell Bloghology readers about your future dreams.

ashchuan: My future dream is to run my own web development business and blog for money but most importantly whatever I do, my goal is to add value to others.

ashchuan’s Page: www.ashchuan.com/blog

Authors Page: merkal2005

powered by Peopleized!

Here is a new social networking site that I stumbled upon today. It is called FriendFeed and when you create an account with FriendFeed, you can use it to share your feeds and connect to friends with feeds that interest you. Signing up with FriendFeed is free and you can import your friends and contacts from various email platforms as well as Facebook.

What feeds can you share in FriendFeed?

News feed such as Digg, Google Reader
Photo feed such as Flickr, Picasa Web Album
Bookmarking feed such as del.icio.us, StumbleUpon
Blogging feed such as Blogger or your independent blog
Music feed such as Last.fm
Status feed such as Gmail/Google Talk, Twitter
Video feed such as YouTube
Misc. feed such as Amazon Wishlists, Netflix Queue, Yelp

I’ve just signed up for an account and my FriendFeed page is http://friendfeed.com/ashchuan

Recently I created an Entrecard account and I have been using the service for almost a week. I find the Entrecard business model provides an effective platform for small bloggers to advertise their site. For those of you who don’t know about Entrecard, here is a brief summary.

Entrecard is a free social advertising network site for bloggers. It allows you you to create a 125 x 125 advert for free. You then place an Entrecard widget on your blog so others can see it and advertise their blog on your widget spot. If they find your blog interesting, they can drop their Entrecard by clicking “Drop Yours” on your widget. The concept of “Drop Yours” is very much like exchanging business cards. All dropped Entrecards will appear in your Inbox on your Entrecard dashboard so you can take you time and look at the other Entrecard members profile and blog.

Advertising starts when you find an interesting site and you buy an ad spot on the site by paying in Entrecard credits instead of real money. You earn credits when you visit other blogs and drop your Entrecard using “Drop Yours”. Each Entrecard has a different advertising rate depending on their popularity. When you decide to buy an ad spot, the blog owner will have to approve your request to advertise. If approved, your ad will appear for 24 hours. If the ad spot is popular, you will be placed in a queue (FIFO) until you reach your turn.

From your dashboard you can look at stats in 3D, message another Entrecard member and look at your queues, e.g. who has dropped their Entrecard, people who have requested for ad spot on your blog, ad spots that you have purchase, etc.

According to the Graham Langdon, the founder of Entrecard, this concept of advertising on blogs using 125 x 125 ads have been quite effective at sending traffic to members’ blogs. (Read Interview with Entrecard’s Graham Langdon). Besides advertising, Entrecard is also an active social network, complete with a forum, messaging system and a marketplace (Entrecard Shop). The Entrecard Shop is the next step forward with the credit economy established by Entrecard.

Here’s Graham Langdon thought on Entrecard Shop:

“Cumulatively, our members are earning thousands of Credits every day, and while it’s nice that you can spend your Credits to advertise on over 1700 blogs, we have a bit of a larger vision. So we’ve opened a shop where bloggers can buy and sell blogging related products and services for Credits. We have people selling exclusive WordPress themes, Blog reviews, SEO consultations, Blog makeovers, unused domain names, and more. The benefit for the seller is that it dramatically increases the amount of credits you earn, thus increasing your purchasing
power as well. The benefit for the buyer is that now you can buy much, much more than network advertising with your Credits.”

Here’s a view of my stats since I joined Entrecard. The stats are conservative (I joined less than a week ago) but mind you I didn’t do much to receive the traffic. All I did was created by 125 x 125 Entrecard and deployed my widget on my blog.

My views on Entrecard – I think the business model works for small and medium sized blogs. It is another way to drive traffic to your blog. The 125 x 125 graphical image works because it does not take up too much space on a blog and it stands out amongst all the text. The down side of Entrecard widget is, people may visit your blog just to drop their Entrecard and move away without reading your content. If only Entrecard can improve on this but how? I think the widget should keep track of page views and allow people to drop their Entrecard only if they have x no. of page views on the blog.

Any other ideas from you?

Today I sat at my desk thinking I haven’t written any post on social networking in a while and thought it might be a good time to talk a little about a new social network that I joined recently. The new social network website that I am talking about is Peopleized.com. Peopleized.com uses interviews as the mechanism to encourage social networking amongst its members. The business model is one that allows the members to use Peopleized.com to find registered people, conduct an interview with them and use the interviews to promote yourself.

Business Model
1. Find people
2. Give Interviews
3. Get Promoted

Signing up on Peopleized.com is free and once you have signed up, you will get an interview request from Halil, one of the co-founders of Peopleized.com. My interview consisted of the following questions.

1. Describe yourself (Age, Gender, Interests).
2. Why did you start blogging?
3. Where do you get your inspiration from to write?
4. Choose one word to describe your blog.

There were other questions like “Your Top 3 Blogs” and “Your Top 3 Posts” which I answered but did you appear on my page after I completed the interview. I guess it is a software glitch!

Once you have signed up, you can start going around interviewing other members and each interview that you give or take will be shown on your profile page. Peopleized.com creates a good platform for promoting your online business, your blog or simply yourself. Peopleized.com is using MyBlogLog.com to promote their social network. You will be able to see a list of recent readers of Peopleized.com who are also MyBlogLog.com’s members.

If you are a blogger like myself, I think it is worth exploring Peopleized.com as another way to promote your blog. I think if its user base continue to grow, it will become a good platform to use to promote yourself. After all it is free advertising!

As a blogger, one of my greatest challenge of all time is to get people to visit my blog and read my content. I think using sites like Peopleized.com and MyBlogLog.com can help promote our blog and get us more recognized and visible out in the world wide web.

Other social network posts that may interest you:

Rules of Social Engagement

A Brazilian hacker has injected a worm in the Orkut social network. It was reported that the worm first appeared in Orkut on 19th Dec. and has spread through Orkut’s scrapbook system and has infected more than 650,000 users.

How does the infection start? It starts when an Orkut user is sent an email them about a new scrapbook entry and when the Orkut user logs in, he/she is greeted by a message in Portuguese. Apparently the infection is spread by just looking at the scrapbook message and no interaction is necessary.

If you have received any scrapbook entries in the last few days, I suggest that you do not read it for it may be the worm working its way through your Orkut. I received a scrapbook entry yesterday and I have not opened it and will stay clear of scrapbook entries for now.

It is finally happening. LinkedIn, the social network for professional will open up its service today to software developers to develop application for the LinkedIn service. LinkedIn is one of the adopters of OpenSocial API. The first software developer creating apps for LinkedIn is BusinessWeek magazine.