Instead of gathering experiences from others, why not writing a non conventional engine from the scratch? Obviously 8x8 chess programming currently seems to have become boring.
So why not write a really challenging program supporting 8x8 and 10x8 chess and most of its interesting variants?
You could get an idea of that fun by experiencing the possibilities of the 10x8 and 8x8 SMIRF Fullchess GUI and engine. It might not be the strongest chess program, but nevertheless it will beat you anyway.
You will find a zipped Windows-32 download of SmNewSetup.exe at the following page:
http://www.10x8.net/chess/SMIRF.html
(There also is a significantly stronger alternative SMIRF engine for all the supporters of the SMIRF project.)