wejustblog

At approximately 11.30am today, we presented our alpha version of the Widgeo.us platform marking the successful completion of this phase. Kudos to Aen, Kah Wee and Uzyn for working round the clock in the run up to today.

It also marks the entry into the next phase of the startup which will involve the development of the platform into a fully functional system…something that we’re requiring before we release this for public use. This is also where we’ll begin to introduce you to what the Widgeo.us platform is about and how it can be relevant to you.

I know that a lot of people have questions as to what we’re trying to do but we’ve been operating in stealth mode to avoid unnecesary attention. Why talk so much if there’s nothing to show right? So now that we do have some skeletal platform out, i’ll start talking about our platform and what problem it’s solving. Screenshots will follow soon.

Unfortunately, we’re keeping the platform closed until we hit our private beta milestone….or maybe we might just send out some invites to random people… haha

Expect me to post up another entry with more meat next week! =)

It’s 5am on my notebook computer and the entire team is still up doing last minute tweaks and integration work before we head on for a presentation to our investors.

It’s an awesome feeling that’s mixed with a tinge of anxiety that after about 4 months of development work, we’re actually going to see something materialise.

I won’t want to celebrate before we officially hit this milestone but here’s to the team and to everyone who’s been so supportive thus far!

Keep on Chugging guys!

Made with Comiqs

Having been away on military duties the past fortnight, coming back to find the Widgeo.us blog launched and Aen’s opening posts is an awesome surprise!

There are many people who have been asking me what this Widgeous thing is about. Some ask me why I do it. Some ask me what it hopes to achieve. If I actually wrote everything out, I think I’d be able to publish a book. So let’s start slowly yeah? I’ll spend this post introducing myself and a tad about Widgeous before we head on towards heavier stuff. Besides, it’s Christmas!

I’m Ridz and like Aen said, I’m the one that’s metaphorically the guy in the suit (Though I hope I won’t have to wear one too often). I’ve spent much of my time trying to create projects that add value to some small pockets of society. I was born in a hospital called “Kandang Kerbau” (translation: Cow Pen) after which I spent the next 20 years growing up learning how to be a true blue Singaporean. In the Widgeous team, I’m handling most of the business development concerns alongside the rest who are focusing on the technical development and design issues. I’m really proud to have such an awesome team with me on this one.

Why Widgeous?

All of us know how important communication is to building healthy relationships. Yet, increasingly, despite the availability of many forms of communication, each channel is rather isolated. This causes things to become rather complicated when we try to contact another person, or a group of them because we’d have to contend with the question of, “How should we communicate with them? Which channel should be best used?”

Humans are social creatures who were born to communicate and because of that I only have one thing to say about the above situation, “Communication should NOT be that complicated.”

And this is where Widgeous comes in. We want to empower people with a platform that allows communication to take place across communication channels (phones, social networks, etc). Beyond that, we’ll also empower users to create and share tools that will harness the platform’s ability.

The philosophy is simple:
You should be able to communicate with your friends easily.
And you should be able to have access to applications that will make that communication effective.
…and if the applications aren’t there yet, we’ll give you tools to build em.

All that said, I’d like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a superb

Merry Christmas!

Regua has just released a new version of his Ajax Comments Posting WordPress plugin. The latest version 1.2 release on 21 December, 2007 fixes a bug where WordPress 2.3.1 server-response errors are not posted and also resolves jQuery’s conflict with Prototype. The changelog can be found at http://regua.biz/acp/.

I am actually the one who got the plugin working for WP 2.3.1. The plugin was originally only meant for older versions of WordPress. When I used it for this blog, I did not realize the incompatibilities until everything was in place and response errors like duplicate comments were not fetched. I spent quite a few hours customizing the plugin before that so going for a different plugin and wasting that few hours wasn’t a good idea. After some Googling and looking at the source codes of other jQuery-based commenting scripts I managed to get it to work with WP 2.3.1 and resolved the conflict with Prototype.

As I am not that good with Javascript, Regua has optimized the code and released the plugin as a new version. You can grab it from the WordPress plugin directory. I highly recommend it. Post a comment on this blog to see a demo.

They were actually printed 2 months ago but I reckoned I’d show them here since we now have an official blog.

The logotype is set in a modified version of the well-known Sans Serif typeface — Helvetica™ Neue Std Medium ITC Franklin Gothic®, for a casual, relaxed appearance. The idea behind this business card design is to pack as much relevant (only relevant) information as possible into a compact card without clutter. I was able to do it by separating the various elements (logo, particulars, description, etc) into boxes and applying some clever typography principles. Colors are meant to be fresh and free from corporate cliché.