So it's been over a year since I started writing chrss now. The central idea (chess by rss) was really simple and that was why I started doing it. I got everything up and running within a couple of months of evenings and weekends and the first move (pawn e2 to e4 of course!) happened in early February. Since then I've added quite a few more features and gained a few more users.
Hopefully in 2008 I'll be still working away adding new features and refining existing ones. I'll have to be careful when adding new features to chrss, as I don't want to clutter things up. I feel like I've got the chess board/game aspect of chrss working pretty well - so I don't want to alter that too much. However there are a few things I have in mind:
Now that covers a multitude of things and I might well change my mind, but I thought it would be good to let people know what I was thinking.
The first item (email notification) is actually mostly done. I'm testing it out myself at the moment - I just haven't added a way to turn it on/off for regular users yet. So that should arrive in the next week or so. I decided that email notification would be a good idea, as not everyone is really au fait with RSS, so email would be a more natural choice.
The OS X dashboard widget is also mostly done. It's pretty similar to the current widget in that it simply shows the number of games it's your turn to move in. Again I'm field testing this at the moment. It will require some prettying up (currently it's an orange square with a number on it), but it's a handy way to see at a glance if you need to make a move.
Speaking of the dashboard widget - it relies on the following URL:
Where lilspikey can be any valid user name. So if anyone else fancies writing a widget of their own (say for Yahoo! Widgets) then feel free.
Anyway, that's enough talk for now. I hope everyone will enjoy the new features, as they appear and carries on enjoying playing chess on chrss!
updated: 2008-01-05 07:44:37