If you are a fan of playing Scrabble but prefer to play games that use technology, then the new game Words With Friends should be right up your street. In this game, players are encouraged to improve their vocabularies while having fun and solving a challenge.

Words With Friends can be played in many different ways. You can play it if you have a smartphone or tablet. If you have been playing PartyPoker on your computer and a friend asks you if you want to play Words with Friends, you can play it on this device as well, via Facebook.

Therefore this game also allows players to chat with each other during play and socialise in a fun and educational environment. If you want to be adventurous, you can even play this game with strangers in a challenge that you can take part in online. It seems that Words With Friends appeals to people of all different generation, with grandparents, office workers, college and high-school students all expressing an interest in playing.

It has also become popular among celebrities, players including singer John Mayer, actor Alec Baldwin, actress Eliza Deshku and football player Terrell Owens. The convenience of this game is that it can be played across many different mobile devices, ensuring that wherever you are, there is usually some way in which you can begin playing.

For those who are really into this game, it is even possible to play Words With Friends tournaments. These can be organised via e-mail or Twitter, by reaching out to fans from various different fan sites that are spread out all over the world. A very high-profile competition like this was started by D magazine in Dallas. Players included the Bettner brothers from Texas, creators of the company Newtoy, an opera singer and a professional football player. Co-president of the National Scrabble Players Association Chris Cree, from Dallas, won the game.

So what are you waiting for? Play Words with Friends now!

How to Call a US or Canada Number Free! Yes, you read that right. Google has launched a new application called GMail Voice. Well, this is not entirely new as it has been available to US and Canada for quite some time now but it is only available now to the rest of the world. Using this new app, you can call anyone’s landline or mobile in the US/Canada for free! You can also call any phone for that matter around the world albeit for a price (rates available on Google website).

I believe if you have a Google account and are already using Gmail, then you should just be 1 step behind before being able to use this cool new feature from Google. Just download the new plugin from Google, install it and then place a call by clicking the “Call Phone” button on the left side of the Gmail dashboard. See pic below (c/o Yugatech):

This is in direct competition with Skype. But although Google is late to the scene, it has a huge advantage over Skype with its massive user base.

When I was younger, there was a time when my parents had me learn and memorize a new word from the dictionary every single day. When they got home from work, I would need to prove that I learned a new word by telling them a sentence using the new word that I have learned. I believe this was sometime during my primary schooling (elementary) days. This training did not last forever of course but I did learn a lot from it.

English is not my first language but my second. Thus there are still a lot of words that I am unfamiliar with and that would require me to look for its meaning. Since the advent of the internet, a lot of petty everyday tasks has been automated and that includes looking for the meaning of a word in the dictionary. So how do I do it?

Type this command in the Google input box:

define:[word]

Just replace [word] with the actual word you are interested in.

Google will do the job for us. Google will look for the meaning of the word we have put into the input box from the various online dictionaries available and will present it to us in a neat formatted page. Thank you Google.

I am taking this a step further by creating a page in my blog which I have entitled “Dictionary“. Some of you might think that this is useless because I am reinventing the wheel. But that is not my purpose. I created this new page so that I can track my progress. A year from now, I can count how many new words I learned within that time span.

So there you have it, that is the reason why I have a new page and I would like to say that out loud so that I have a new blog post ready for the Google spiders to devour.

How to Use a Custom Domain Name for Blogger via Namecheap? To elaborate further, how do you setup a domain you bought from Namecheap to be used for your blogger blog so that instead of having the “BLOGNAME.blogspot.com” type of URL, you will have a much better looking one like this => www.myblog.com ?

Again, the steps I am going to show is for domains bought from Namecheap and Namecheap only so please use your discretion when trying to follow the steps outlined below for a domain bought not from Namecheap. Generally, the steps would be the same but I am going detailed here so there.

Before going further, here are some readings you may read to be able to understand the process better. If you simply want to get this over with as soon as possible then just skip through the links below.

Reading 1
Reading 2
Reading 3

Steps for Namecheap Domain Name to Blogger Setup

1. First, login to your Namecheap account, go to MANAGE DOMAINS and select the domain you want to setup from the list of domains available.
2. Then, go to HOST MANAGEMENT > ALL HOST RECORDS .
3. Under SUB-DOMAIN SETTINGS, you will see a total of 10 text boxes and 5 drop-down menus arranged in a tabular (3×5) manner. We will use all of those.
4. Populate the first row of text boxes and drop-down menu (2 text boxes and 1 drop-down menu) with => “@”, “216.239.32.21″, “A (Address)” respectively without the quotes.
5. Populate the second row of text boxes and drop-down menu (2 text boxes and 1 drop-down menu) with => “@”, “216.239.34.21″, “A (Address)” respectively without the quotes.
6. Populate the third row of text boxes and drop-down menu (2 text boxes and 1 drop-down menu) with => “@”, “216.239.36.21″, “A (Address)” respectively without the quotes.
7. Populate the fourth row of text boxes and drop-down menu (2 text boxes and 1 drop-down menu) with => “@”, “216.239.38.21″, “A (Address)” respectively without the quotes.
8. Populate the fifth row of text boxes and drop-down menu (2 text boxes and 1 drop-down menu) with => “www”, “ghs.google.com”, “CNAME (Alias)” respectively without the quotes.
9. Press the SAVE CHANGES button at the bottom of the page.
10. Login to your blogger account and go to SETTINGS > PUBLISHING.
11. Type in your custom domain in the first box complete with the www prefix. Check the redirect box under it.
12. Save the blogger settings.
13. Normally, they tell you to wait 24-48 hours for the changes to take effect but if you are fortunate, it takes effect just 2-3 hours after following the steps above.

There you have it, the steps to be able to use a custom domain name you bought from Namecheap with your blogger blog. If any of the steps are unclear or you have any questions with the steps, just leave a comment below and I will respond as soon as possible.

I recently bought a couple of domains from Namecheap and I would like to share the coupon code for the month of November 2009. The coupon code is – AUTUMNLEAVES. Use this code to get a small discount on individual domain names. Enter it before checking out.

Since I am talking about Namecheap, I might as well give it a short review and feedback.

Before Namecheap, I was using GoDaddy, the big daddy of all domain name registrants. The site has a nice interface but a naughty marketing system. There is an advertisement pitch in each and every hop in GoDaddy and that is what I don’t like with their system. What’s more, they look complicated and somehow cluttered.

Fast forward to Namecheap, it is the opposite of GoDaddy. Its interface is simple but nice. It is not cluttered and it offers you a fast and quick way to register domain names. In other words, it is everything GoDaddy is not. Thus if you are looking to buy new domain names, I would without hesitation recommend Namecheap.

No, I am not giving out free Google Wave invites but instead I just want to say that someone nominated me for a Google invite. Yes, to get a Google Wave account, you would need someone with a “nomination ticket” to nominate you for an account.

I got my account a weeks ago but it wasn’t until today that I was able to play with. I did not do so thoroughly though. I just tried out whatever I wanted to without a clear goal in mind. That said, here are a few things that I noticed.

Slow on Firefox, fast on Chrome
I am not sure why but using GW on Firefox was very slow. It could be with the plugins and all but there are several other reports of the same thing happening to them. On the other hand, other GW users report that Chrome does a good job with GW.

Can edit other people’s text
GW is unlike any other. It is like a massive chat window but it is not. It’s a file sharing service but its not. Confused? Me too. That’s the point hehe. But from what I saw just now, you can edit the text of another person much like what you can do in Wikipedia.

Can see text as it is being typed
So much for privacy. You can now see what the other person is typing even before he or she submits it! You would be able to see all the grammatical errors and spelling errors that the other party is committING (highlight on ING…).

Well, those are my initial observations. I think this is a neat technology that has a lot of rough edges to smoothen. But once things have been patched up, it will be a great collaboration tool to be used not only by the public but also as a business tool that Google can monetize in the future.

My friend and his circle of friends recently announced the launch of their new website, Null Pointer. From the looks of it and as they claim themselves, it is a Filipino version of the well-known international developers’ forum we know as Stack Overflow. They have the same looks, use the same engine (that is what I heard) and have the same purpose. So why create a new forum then?

The question is simple but complicated to some. So is its answer. Let us answer it from taking the forums’ purpose into consideration. Let us just take 2 points.

1) The forum is there to help facilitate a healthy environment where expert and newbie programmers can share their expertise.
2) The forum intends to support itself via advertisements and in the long run hope to create enough income for the site creators to earn a living from.

The forum is there to help facilitate a healthy environment where expert and newbie programmers can share their expertise.

This is a good goal. It is a noble goal actually. Wanting to help people is certainly a good thing to do. However, why duplicate an already successful forum in Stack Overflow? Niche. The creators of the site want to localize the forum to Filipino developers. Though, the world is moving towards being more globalized, it still makes sense to make a niche out of a large niche. Being in a large crowd has its drawbacks. Your voice might not get heard loud enough for people to answer. Being in a global forum makes that a case in point. There have been reports that sometimes members of that forum have their concerns not noticed thus their problems unanswered. Null Pointer hopes to fix that by taking the Filipino developers under their wings where every developer can speak out and have their questions answered.

The forum intends to support itself via advertisements and in the long run hope to create enough income for the site creators to earn a living from.

This one is a bit obvious. If you want to be successful, model someone successful. And Stack Overflow is certainly a smashing success. By doing what Stack Overflow does even to the point of copying its looks, Null Pointer has a big potential of success. And by successful, I meant that the forum will overflow with traffic that will in turn convert into cash (hopefully).

So if you are a developer, go to Null Pointer and give it a spin. There is nothing to lose.

I am no stranger to WP themes. However, it has been a while since I last coded a WP theme and last installed a plugin. Due to pressing demands from my day job, I am not able to practice my web programming at all! But now I am taking this opportunity to do so. Last night before going to sleep, I bought this domain and today, I am “decorating” it with a new WP theme, the Innodemag WP theme.

This theme is elegant. It also uses a plugin called Featured Content Gallery plugin. At first, I did not have that plugin. Hence, the rotating gallery feature did not work. Since I know a bit of WP Theming, I looked into the code and found out what I needed, the plugin!

According to the documentation, for the gallery to work, I need at least 2 images. So here it is, my second post on this blog. I’ll be adding another image (random image) and hoping that it works.

Update after 2 minutes:
It worked alright! I’ll be playing with this theme for a while.

Another Update:
I was surprised the Featured Video feature is a static and hard-coded one. It is not dynamic and you would have to manually update the settings.php file to change the video. So how do you update the video? You have to get the Youtube video ID (eg “0kuWo02QPHI”) and paste it in the ‘youtube’ value of the settings array.

And Another:
Another roadblock is the Tag Cloud. To be able to use the 3d rotating tag cloud, you would have to install another WP plugin, the WP Cumulus plugin.