HSBC Branches and ATMs in China

HSBC ATMs in China from the HSBC China site, including those at airports.

Citibank ATMs in Bali

Bandara Bali Arrival International Area (beside Baggage Plane).	Jl. Bandara Ngurah Rai, Denpasar – Bali
Jimbaran Mc Donald Jimbaran	Jl. Raya By Pass Ngurah Ray No.1 Denpasar – Bali
Sanur Mc Donald Denpasar	Jl. Raya By.Pass Ngurah Ray No.109 Denpasar – Bali
Teuku Umar Branch 1	Jl. Teuku Umar, Denpasar Bali
Teuku Umar Branch 2	Jl. Teuku Umar, Denpasar Bali

Garmin's Worldmap V3.02 and V 4 Comparison

Trying to determine the differences / comparison between Garmin's Worldmap V 3.02 and V 4. On a 76CSx I found that I could generally tell where I was in Malaysia, but when zoomed the map might show me well in the water in places like Melaka.

A comparison is the kind of thing that would be useful in the site's product description.

Free City Tours in Europe

WELCOME TO SANDEMANS NEW EUROPE: "free walking tours in London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Munich, and Paris"
Mentioned by Stan Sesser in the WSJ, 9 Jun 07. Berlin also has a free bike tour.

NPR : 'China Road' Trip

NPR : 'China Road' Trip Gauges a Nation on the Move: "In 2004, Rob Gifford set out on a 3,000-mile journey across China. The NPR correspondent followed a single highway west from Shanghai into the heart of Asia. His trip resulted in a series of stories and now a book, called China Road, a look at the rapidly rising nation."

Translate Foreign Language Web Sites

Cool Things You Can Do With Google - lifehack.org: "Translate Foreign Sites

A large portion of the web sites on the Internet are not in English. This means that you’re missing out on a big portion of the Web. Fortunately, Google has provided a solution.

First, translate the word you want to search for into the desired language. You can do this at BabelFish. Next, go to Google, enter your search query, and press enter.

On the results page, you should see a link that says, “Translate this page” to the right side of the search results. Click on that link and Google will automatically translate the page to English
for you."

Excel tips and keyboard shortcuts

Aabservations » Blog Archive » Excel tips and keyboard shortcuts

Visualizing the ‘Power Struggle’ in Wikipedia

Visualizing the ‘Power Struggle’ in Wikipedia

Top 20 Most Hotly Revised Articles

• Jesus
• Adolf Hitler
• October 2003
• Nintendo revolution
• Hurricane Katrina
• India
• RuneScape
• Anarchism
• Britney Spears
• PlayStation 3
• Saddam Hussein
• Japan
• Albert Einstein
• 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake
• New York City
• Germany
• Muhammid
• Pope Benedict XVI
• Ronald Regan
• Hinduism
  

Comparison of TMC Traffic vs. MSN Direct for GPS

Comparison of TMC Traffic vs. MSN Direct on your GPS | GPS Lodge

Compares traffic features such as on Garmin nüvi [nuvi[ 660 and 680

DoDo Jin Ming Page - Laurence Miller Gallery

DoDo Jin Ming Page - Laurence Miller Gallery: "DoDo Jin Ming Respecting the awesome power and drama found only in the sea, DoDo Jin Ming creates extraordinary black and white images that transport the viewer to a precipice about to be submerged under a cascade of water."

Sri Lanka closing airport at night after rebel airstrikes - International Herald Tribune

Sri Lanka closing airport at night after rebel airstrikes - International Herald Tribune: "Sri Lanka's only international airport will be closed at night after a series of Tamil Tiger rebel air raids near the capital...

The airport will be shut from 10:30 p.m. to 4:30 a.m each day starting May 10, [2007]"

Need to check times for SQ, which used to arrive and depart during this window.

» 2.5 TERABYTE hot-swap storage for $730! | George Ou | ZDNet.com

» 2.5 TERABYTE hot-swap storage for $730! | George Ou | ZDNet.com: "2.5 terabytes of hot-swappable SATA-300 storage"

Need to understand capabilities of storagecontroller, though. See comment:

...using highpoint rocketraid 2320 card, hot swap capability is a function of the controller, not the caddy

SMS Your Flight Status

Business Hacks » SMS Your Flight Status on BNET: "I've long since stopped using 411 as a resource when I'm on the go. It's pretty expensive, and Google's free text message service is almost as fast and doesn't require me to wait on the line. (I just SMS my request to 466453.) Recently, Google integrated this service with flightstats.com such that it allows you to check out your flight on the go. For example, I typed in 'swa 1582' to check the status of an Oakland-Reno flight, and I got a message with the flight details and status (on time!) right away.

By David Goldenberg"

Yamaha takes 24-hour lead in A/V receiver war | Crave : The gadget blog

Yamaha takes 24-hour lead in A/V receiver war | Crave : The gadget blog: "the RX-V861 is no slouch: in addition to the usual assortment of high-end audio goodies (

• auto speaker calibration,
• multizone operation,
• built-in XM satellite capability,
• 105 watts per channel), it's got
• two Simplay HD-certified 1080p-capable HDMI inputs, and--just as important--
• it can upscale analog video sources to HD resolutions.

What it's missing, of course, is a few of the keystone features we're expecting in the true 'next-gen' receivers due later this year: namely,

• HDMI 1.3 and
• built-in support for
  
• Dolby True HD,
  
• Dolby Digital Plus, and
  
• DTS HD Master Audio (the super-high-def soundtracks found on HD DVD and Blu-ray discs)."

Mowser mobilizes any Web page | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone

Mowser mobilizes any Web page | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone: "bookmark Mowser and use it as the front-end to the Web on your mobile. Mowser transcodes any page into a Web-friendly format, stripping out large graphics and splitting a Web page up into smaller pages that a phone can handle. It's also RSS-aware: If there's an RSS feed on a page you visit, it will provide a link for it, and transcode the feed into a format your phone can easily display.

The service has built-in bookmarks for major sites that are already mobile-friendly (which it does not transcode) and it has keywords for popular searches. For example, if you type 'wi' followed by a search term, you'll get the Mowser-compacted version of the Wikipedia page for that term"

CableCard goes mainstream on July 1 | Crave : The gadget blog

CableCard goes mainstream on July 1 | Crave : The gadget blog: "CableCard may be going mainstream just as its successor technology is ready to leave the lab. Downloadable Conditional Access System is essentially a software version of the CableCard technology that promises to correct all of the current standard's shortcomings. But it won't be ready for deployment until 2008 at the earliest."

FTP clients

Choosing between FileZilla and FireFTP.

Wikipedia Comparison of FTP Clients

Documentation:

• FileZilla
• FireFTP
  

Vietnam Revisited - WSJ.com

Vietnam Revisited - WSJ.com: "...The author might want to improve his own grasp of Vietnamese culture: He tells us that the Citadel is 'ancient,' but in fact construction on it started in 1804. Besotted with the setting's beauty and supposed antiquity, he finds himself envying the simple pride shown by Hien, their guide. 'Soon Hien was no longer leading us. Instead he seemed pleased simply to stand amid the astonishments of such a storied place.' Mr. Bissell himself, he confesses, has never felt a similar awe at any of his own country's cultural monuments -- the Lincoln Memorial, say. He asks his father: 'Why is that?'

'Because you're an ungrateful little prick,' replies John (Nice Guy) Bissell."

Garmin Nuvi 680 Full Review

...it has the ability to pull down information about weather, movies, traffic and gas prices.

The MSN Direct system will retrieve movie theater locations and what's playing at those theaters too, allowing you to search by movie or theater.

When you tap on the weather button you get a forecast for a city or town close to you. As the unit pulls down more weather information, the display will show you the opportunity for a weather forecast at most cities and the option to browse other cities.

You get a list of towns and cities near you and then as you continue to scroll you start to get a list of major cities near you.

MSN Direct covers about 100,000 gas stations across the country, and after doing a little research I found that the US has 121,000 gas stations, making for about 83% coverage of major gas stations (there are about another 10,000 outlets with no employees, making them, in my mind, so small they may not be worth considering; even if you add those, that's still an impressive coverage number - 75%)

MSN Direct Traffic on the Nuvi 680
This gets a little messy, and to fully understand the traffic area, you need to understand the suppliers of traffic data. The Nuvi 680 uses MSN Direct Traffic. MSN Direct uses Traffic.com's data (being acquired by NAVTEQ), which relies on road sensors for the most part to gather information about traffic flow and incidents.

The Nuvi 660 and most of the Garmin line uses TMC traffic also supplied over the FM band by ClearChannel communications. The data is fed by Inrix. I have written a lot about Inrix, and their miles of road covered is superior to Traffic.com's from what I can tell. Check out how Inrix collects more information about roads that don't have expensive installed sensors; it's called the Dust Network, and it's pretty innovative.

Don't walk away from the Traffic.com fed MSN traffic yet. The data feed coming from Traffic.com tells you anticipated delays along your route, where speed data is given. So something like: "2 incidents on your route. 15 minute delay." I like this, as it informs me about what is going on and how much trouble I am in for. The trade-off here is coverage, for what is a pretty useful feature in my mind.

You can compare the coverage for your area at Inrix or at Traffic.com. At Inrix, just click on your city to see a what roads are covered in your area. At Traffic.com, click on your city and then on the Map tab to show the coverage graphically.

Asterix thread on FlyerTalk

Includes information on compatible providers .

Asterix projects

Good source for Asterix implementation information.

Funny, Informative Blog on Western China

While looking for information on Tibet Travel Permits, I came across this interesting blog.