Wednesday, December 31, 2008

NYT: Tracking the $700B Bailout. Nice that funds are going to writedowns and not recapitalization. http://ping.fm/fXGK7

Monday, December 29, 2008

"Get Into #London Theatre" promotion. Prebook discount tickets #travel http://ping.fm/t5kJj

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Travel Notes: London Jan/Feb 07

Trip Diary (retrospective notes): London, January/February, 2007

1/31/07
UA954 SFO 612P - LHR 2/1/07 1240P
10h 28m
B777
5368 miles
Fare SECATAZ $446.93
Seat 25C

HSBC ATM @ LHR Term 3 using HSBC card withdraw £50
Oyster top up £20 at TFL Travel Info Center

Thu, 2/1/07
Barkston Gardens Hotel
34 Barkston Gardens, SW5 (Mo. Earl's Court)
Hotwire $65 + 13.21 = $78.21
free wireless; old hotel, but ok

The Earl's Court area is farther west from where I normally stay in London and it was an interesting neighborhood. Too far to go for most of the tourist stuff I like.

Possible theatre:
  • Pinter's People
  • 12th Night
  • 39 Steps
  • Don Juan in Soho
  • History Boys - Wyndham's CC Road/St Martin's Court
  • Bash - Trafalgar Studios, 14 Whitehall
Bash by Leil Labute, Trafalgar Studios £22.50

Dinner @ Masala Zone, Earl's Court

Fri, 2/2/07
Holiday Inn London-Regent's Park
Carburton St/Bolsover St W1W (Mo. Great Portland St)
Hotwire $39 + $13.68 = $52.68! I remember trying different combinations of dates and lucking out with this low rate. Too bad it meant moving each night, though the good part is that I was able to sample several hotels new to me. Hotel was being painted on interior, but smell wasn't significant in the room

Pret a Manger lunch £4.74

Walked Hampsted Heath in the afternoon. I used the Pathfinder Guide In and Around London Walks, which I got at Stanford's on a previous trip, as a guide.


TKTS: 12th Night @ Old Vic £20

Zizzi, 33 Charlotte St £18.20

Sat, 2/3/07
Hilton London Olympia
380 Kensington High St W14 (Mo. High Street Kensington and a bus ride west)
Hotwire $104 + 7.15 = $111.15
Noisy!

Grande Latte £2.15 Coffee Republic Tottenham Court Rd

Masala Zone beer £2.75 + grand thali £9.45 + £1.22 service = £13.42
9 Marshall St W1

Easy Internet cafe £2

TKTS: 39 Steps @ Criterion £22

Sun, 2/4/07
Novotel London Euston
Priceline 4* Bid $75; total $95.90
5 minutes walk from Euston; repeat Priceline "win"

Walked over to North Sea Fish, but closed (Sunday, duh)

Malabar Junction lunch; £4.99 by the British Museum

Covent Garden scenes:


Pizza Express dinner; Euston Rd £18.55 Yeah, boring, but convenient.

Mon, 2/5/07
Signed up at LHR for Iris Recognition Immigration System too bad it expires 4 Feb 09

Travel Notes: Singapore-Malaysia Jan 07

Trip Diary (retrospective notes): Singapore-Malaysia, January, 2007
1/17/07; 1/18/07
United 837 SFO-NRT-SIN; Wed, Jan 17 1129A- Thu, Jan 18 330P
connecting to UA 803 SIN-NRT-SFO; Thu, Jan 18 530P - 1159P

SFO-NRT upgraded to C using 1K SWU, 5124 miles, seat 25F
NRT-SIN C, 3324 miles, seat 24G
B 747; Fare Class WXPRO10; $836.7

@SIN
Cheap airport shuttle a bust, as usual, since it wasn't leaving until 130A,though I checked the time anyway for due diligence, then joined the fairly long taxi queue.

Not much point to taking the airport shuttle unless it leaving almost immediately and there aren't many people on it.  In my experience the airport shuttle almost invariably lets me off last.  At least once the shuttle came very close to my hotel and passed on.  It's not that less expensive than the taxi (and never worth it if traveling with someone).  The MRT is cheap to the airport, but takes forever, and isn't an option after about 11PM.
 
Never paid attention before, but it's 18KM from SIN to Hotel 81 Bugis according to the receipt. Room rate $89 x 2 days for a windowless, aircon room. Clean and secure, if basic, with one of the full flood bathrooms without a separate shower stall.  Non-squat, western toilet.  The room was away from the lift so less noisy than some rooms.  For whatever reason this Hotel 81 branch doesn't get the short time hotel crowd like the Palace in Geylang.  I made the reservation online directly. 
Of course, the driver didn't know where the hotel was, so directed to Shaw Towers and then the 1/2 block from there. I had found on a previous trip that directing to the Intercontinental is a bust since he has to make a U turn.  I don't know why I try to avoid the Singapore taxis.  They're pretty honest.

1/19/07
Breakfast (not included at Hotel 81) at Killiney Kopitiam around the corner on Purvis. S$4; I guess it was a version of nasi lemak, plus the toast and kaya, plus coffee.

Internet cafe on Stamford Rd. S$5.25 to find hotel in Malacca and KL, using Asiatravel, but ended up booking directly with the Hotel Puri's Singapore office by mobile phone.  I was looking for a hotel with character and wasn't particularly price sensitive, within reason.

I also considered the Baba House 

After seeing both the Hotel Puri and the Baba House, I think the Puri was the better choice.

Coffee 1.20 with the usual struggle to stay awake the first day.  Not at Starbucks!

Lunch 6.30 @ Bugis Junction foodcourt; "gourmet" claypot S$5 plus a drink

MTR to Lavender, then connecting bus after screwing around for a while trying to find offices for the VIP buses to Malacca and KL.  I should have noted their addresses first, but I thought there would be easy to find signs.  Nope.  Lavender bus "station" is basically a big parking lot with some small temporary type offices for selling tickets.  Nothing like a Malaysian or Thai bus station.

Bus ticket to Malacca $16 purschased for the next day @ 10A from Lavender bus station

I needed some RM and had wanted to check out Mustafa Centre in Little India anyway.  It was within walking distance, but a taxi seemed an ok choice.  Taxi $4 from Lavender station to Mustafa Centre. And almost stupidly lost my wallet in the taxi, but luckily the taxi couldn't move immediately because of a traffic jam and I retrieved my wallet from the back seat.  Duh.

Changed S$ to RM at the always entertaining Mustafa Centre

Dinner: Chicken noodles $3; beer $5 at the handy (and cheap) Seng Huat on North Bridge road


Internet $3

Haagan Dazs in front of the Hilton for old times' sake. 4.70 for a single waffle cone



1/20/07
Breakfast $4 at Killiney Kopitiam

Top up mobile $18 @ 7/11 using a SIM with S'pore number from a previous trip

Taxi to Lavender bus station $6.50

Bus to Malacca took 2nd/Tuas border crossing

Lunch along the road @ Ayer Hitam 1230P RM8

Malaysian SIM RM5 bought in the Malacca bus station

Taxi from Malacca bus station to Hotel Puri RM10!, going rate 15.  Beats me how I got this rate.  The driver may have been illegal.

Hotel Puri RM172.50, room 310, free wireless internet in lobby.  Rom was in the newer part of the hotel and was pretty charmless, though nice enough.

While in Malacca I did the usual tourist things, got lost at least once, and did a lot of walking.


Dinner at hotel RM15.  Walked all over the area of the hotel and saw many restaurants, but most would have been best with another person.  In the end, took the easy way out and had a quite dinner in the hotel's garden.
 
Day View

And at dinner.


1/21/07
Breakfast included at Hotel Puri, somewhat of a mob scene.

Walked around again while it was till fairly cool.  Got lost again.

Taxi to bus station RM 15.  I asked the hotel to call a taxi after waiting a while on the street.  It took forever to come after the call.  Next time I'd probably just try to flag one down on the street and wait longer.

Bus ticket to KL Puduraya station RM9.50, on Transnational; the largest (?) Malaysia carrier.  Of course, the bus didn't actually make it into the station because of usual jam outside the station.  Since it wasn't raining this was only somewhat inconvenient.  Finding the Swiss Inn was somewhat challenging.  I had through the Hotel Furama would be a good landmark, but it was closed.  Luckily someone pointed me in the right direction and I got there in 10 minutes walk from the bus station.

Swiss Inn RM108, superior room including breakfast, booked through Asiatravel, initially charged RM170, lesson learned: be sure to print travel agent confirmation! Room 530

Lunch chicken nasi RM5.50.  Don't remember where this was, but it must have been some informal restaurant.

Basically walked around Chinatown for the day, not going further afield. 

Dinner Tang City food court chicken noodles + beer RM5 + RM7.40

Bus ticket back to Singapore RM30.50 1/22 @ 10:30A, Transnasional

1/22/07
Lunch RM4.50 on the road back to S'pore; causeway border crossing

Internet S$3

Dinner S4 + S5.40 t at some stall or food court

1/23/07
Taxi  from Hotel 81 Bugis to SIN S$18.45, 12.30 plus night differential 6.15
UA804 SIN-NRT 730A-255P
UA838 NRT-SFO 525P-920A

Notes and random jottings:
  • Most Singapore transport was by bus and MTR using an EZ Link card from a previous trip.
  • Used leftover S$ from previous trips and then hit an ATM using HSBC card by the City Hall/City Link passage.  HSBC  card didn't work in Malaysia, but I may have been trying it in a deposit only machine, now that I think about it.  It worked on a subsequent trip in Malaysia.
  • Jetstar to PNH: low cost carrier
  • Lantern Festival Taiwan. Did this reference come from a travel show I watched along the way?
  • Celtic Tides CD music must have been playing along the way

Friday, December 26, 2008

#Birdie offline #twitter client designed for intermittent/disrupted internet access http://ping.fm/Ot06r
#China province/2nd tier city/Tibet maps English/Chinese #travel http://ping.fm/2tu6e

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Strategies for buying domestic air tickets in #China #travel http://ping.fm/Onhvf
#Flyertalk list of recommended #Shanghai #China restaurants #travel http://ping.fm/mi5Ni

Monday, December 22, 2008

#IBM consolidations: 128 CIOs-> 1; 155 #datacenter -> 5; 16K legacy apps-> 5K; current CIO comes from marketing/sales http://ping.fm/Fi2oy
#datacenter cost reported as approximately US$1300/sq ft and new build takes 18 months http://ping.fm/8ndaC
#tool to group multiple URLs into one short URL. Useful for profiles such as #twitter www.krunchd.com

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Financial assets in toilet? 2008 might be good year to convert Trad IRA to Roth if AGI < $100K #tax http://ping.fm/Xdtpt
FAQ:High Performance FICON #IBM #storage #mainframe http://ping.fm/VYtzs
CAIJING 2009 conference videos and session notes #China #business http://ping.fm/rUPHg
Online #storage comparison chart http://ping.fm/IbXow
Data cleanup: Magic/Replace is a tool to make changes to all of the rows of a data table at once http://cleanupdata.com/
Financial data visualized as sculpture: US stock market indexes; global GDP overlaid with derivatives volume http://ping.fm/GNzG4

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Gao Xiqing, #China banker who oversees $200B of $2T US debt, interviewed by James Fallows, Atlantic http://ping.fm/maEeH
#Google Apps now includes standalone shared contacts manager, but only Premier edition allows including shared eternal contacts! Not good!

Friday, December 19, 2008

Most foreign investment in #Cambodia from 1994 in service sector, then industry, with agriculture and other trailing http://ping.fm/0Tw36
Study of effects of recent political instability in #Thailand on hotel operators. Only thru mid-Dec http://ping.fm/3xWmI

Thursday, December 18, 2008

#California is defining strategic corridors for high speed #network #infrastructure deployment, possibly using CalTrans right of way in part
SnapTell #iPhone app: Shazam like tagging of books, CDs, DVDs using camera; get back reviews, prices; uses machine image recognition
tn3270 #mainframe terminal emulation apps, free and pay, available for #iPhone (other emulation apps, too) http://ping.fm/d6UU8

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Telcordia publishes new GR-3108 Generic Requirements for Network Equipment in the Outside Plant http://ping.fm/C2IR4
#Travel - Hertz Connect, car on demand for NYC, #London, #Paris http://ping.fm/38OxA

Monday, December 15, 2008

Government labs, universities, and financial traders major 40G / 100G markets with video <50% of demand http://lw.pennnet.com/Articles/Article_Display.cfm?Section=ARTCL&SubSection=Display&PUBLICATION_ID=13&ARTICLE_ID=347978&dcmp=LWDENL
Account of walking between #Kathmandu #Nepal & #Tibet http://ping.fm/KDr1c

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Wikipedia list of common misconceptions http://ping.fm/JX11Z

Friday, December 12, 2008

GaianDB: dynamic distributed federated database copes with failures or network topology changes. store locally, query anywhere http://ping.fm/fUU7P

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Are legacy admin apps (think payroll) and #ERP compatible with mapreduce? Simplifies #datacenter provisioning. Converge admin and "other"
What's value of enterprise #storage in a #hadoop world where servers & storage are expected to fail? http://ping.fm/8oVN6

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Google's Browser Security Handbook http://ping.fm/nMPqC
Sri Lanka's budget airline, Mihin Lanka is to resume flights from December 21 http://poprl.com/7vx
Shanghai lady, after arguing about being towed, drives off in her car with tow truck attached http://ping.fm/f3DRH
Understanding HP Lab’s #Twitter Research http://ping.fm/umqCh
Distributed computing manipulating terabytes of data with hardware/storage expected to fail using Linux & Hadoop http://ping.fm/8oVN6
Optical transport equipment market forecast to decline nearly 10% in 2009 http://lw.pennnet.com/Articles/Article_Display.cfm?Section=ONART&PUBLICATION_ID=13&ARTICLE_ID=347554&C=NNEWS&dcmp=rss
Is airline industry in #China in financial distress? http://ping.fm/SdzSU
Enterprise storage and twitter http://ping.fm/roH1D

Sunday, December 07, 2008

40G / 100G networks to mix Ethernet, Infiniband, and SONET http://ping.fm/sbx3u
"If you only read on thing on #China this fall" http://ping.fm/V19BS
#China creative abilities and innovation as seen by Elliot Ng http://ping.fm/ST1Yk
Companies emerging to advise against unsafe goods procurement from #China http://ping.fm/VhVLc

Saturday, December 06, 2008

One step to resolving the Preah Vihear dispute would be a public, transparent survey of the demarcation between #Cambodia and #Thailand
There may be value in differentiating twitter #isdown tweets between consumer rants and more "enterprise level" outage reports
Estimate of costs of #hydrogen #infrastructure in US http://ping.fm/YEMzO
#Asia #travel Online express bus booking for #Singapore - #Malaysia but I generally just show up and get a seat http://ping.fm/ebGaG

Friday, December 05, 2008

#Vietnam To Regulate Blogging http://ping.fm/hHLZb
Best Nextag/Pricegrabber price with least exposure to hassle for #Nikon #D90, 18-200 lens, 12-24 lens, and SB-400 flash was #Amazon!
#China 20m migrants, typically from west to eastern, coastal cities out of work from 1/08 to 6/08 http://ping.fm/0jB4W

Thursday, December 04, 2008

Some discussion about FTTH Fiber to the Home http://ping.fm/acsTs
#China possible major loser as a result of crisis, even with large econ growth and foreign reserves? http://ping.fm/93RL5
#cloud computing versus #co-location http://ping.fm/kVd14
#datacenter #infrastructure Power Usage Effectiveness is generally 2.5 or 2 units in for 1 unit to servers/storage. Could be 1.6. http://ping.fm/b66CO
#datacenter #infrastructure Comparative electrical power cost in USA by state http://ping.fm/GSnoF
anxious about a #CPUC Notice to Proceed (NTP) for a major, multi-jurisdiction Northern California fiber infrastructure network project
wish list: 1) #iPhone with easy swap SIM; 2) affordable pre-paid data plans for outside USA. Local numbers ok.
need to define California strategic corridors for #broadband deployment. Follow CalTrans? Which inter-city fiber providers besides #CalREN?
#datacenter What's the minimum outage that should be reflected in a SLA? @datacenter reports that Google says >10 minutes!
#datacenter very difficult to get vendor criteria for seismic, power, environmental, security, safety, etc. across all our 20 main sites
found out there's a two step process to using #Firefox #Geode geo locating add on with #FireEagle. 1)Pinpoint location; 2) update FireEagle
trying out #Firefox #Geode geolocating add-on at work site. Not sure of the privacy implications for this stuff
why would I want to use IBM's #Lotus #Bluehouse todo when #Jott is better integrated with #GCal, #twitter, and the rest of today's tools?

Wednesday, December 03, 2008

With $1 of stimulus to spend on broadband *or* electric grid infrastructure, what % to each? Grid needs likely poorly understood.
thinking how much of a standardized installation process with customer and vendor involvement should go through the ticket/tracking system
#Datatcenter seismic criteria: Bldg type, construction type, soil profile, seismic coef (Cv/Ca), seismic source, seismic importance, zone
Need an industry standard measure of how a #datacenter meets seismic standards. Code compliance in year built/remodeled?
How important is electrostatic dissipation on a #datacenter floor?
Free tier for Amazon Simple DB http://ping.fm/fM8n7
#Google #Maps disallowed an update because I was supposed to have made too many edits lately. Except this is 1st in days.
If #Google Notebook is killed, is #Evernote the best alternative? Need to export a *lot* of GNotebook content somehow. http://ping.fm/Diufg

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

NorCal #Datacenter Pulse meeting 17-18 Feb 08 http://ping.fm/E6fLo
Irritating that the #Java update 6.11 install package includes the dumb #Yahoo Toolbar as a default, checked option.
#Broadband coalition call for national (USA) broadband strategy http://ping.fm/xcJAD
Ping.fm AOL IM interface is down, so need to post through web [retro]
#Hertz at #LGB gives out #Priceline cars that run poorly, have manual windows/locks with s-l-o-w service
Got it! I'll go ahead and post that for you. Don't forget to vote for us in Mashable's 2008 Open Web Awards! You can vote once per day! - http://ping.fm/78pwX
Got it! I'll go ahead and post that for you. Don't forget to vote for us in Mashable's 2008 Open Web Awards! You can vote once per day! - http://ping.fm/78pwX
Got it! I'll go ahead and post that for you. Don't forget to vote for us in Mashable's 2008 Open Web Awards! You can vote once per day! - http://ping.fm/78pwX
#Hertz at #LGB gives out #Priceline cars that run poorly, have manual windows/locks with s-l-o-w service
Berkeley High meeting on academic change recommendations questions at http://ping.fm/9guhf

Monday, December 01, 2008

Micropayments used extensively in China; WSJ video http://ping.fm/HV3y6
Twitpay: Twitter based micropayments with Paypal link

Friday, November 28, 2008

50+ iPhone App Store Apps for Free -possibly temporary http://ping.fm/2xY7k

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

New iPod Touch's ARM processor runs at 532MHz, while iPhone 3G runs at 412MHz. Better gaming performance

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Sync Google Calendar with iCal or Sunbird using CalDAV http://ping.fm/ZzoLN
Google Maps UI revised with Streetview enhancements http://ping.fm/3JN8o

Monday, November 24, 2008

Lenovo is adding security to its ThinkPad notebooks that will allow a user to disable a laptop by sending a text message

Saturday, November 22, 2008

using twitter at high volume http://ping.fm/CCK7T
convert pdf to Microsoft Word http://ping.fm/oLJDn
search tags on twitter http://tweetag.com/
Google Calendar now does time zone auto-detection to help you view your calendar in the right local time zone when you're traveling.
It took Google six hours and two minutes to sort 1PB (10 trillion 100-byte records) on 4,000 computers http://ping.fm/HXvg0
the European Commission launched an important online project called Europeana (down until December) http://ping.fm/2H9ou
In Google Maps, you can simply enter the 3-letter airport code to find it on the map.
in the 2.2 version of Google Maps for iPhone, you can email information about a location to your friends

Friday, November 21, 2008

Lotus Bluehouse: enough added value for colleagues to sustain use?
wondering if IBM's Lotus Bluehouse works ok with Firefox. Works with IE, but a blank screen with Firefox after login.
thinking I need an easier way to dial long con call number with passcodes on iPhone while driving. Probably a Contacts feature

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Google GMail themes are a cool feature! Use settings to configure.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Mzima networks - optical transport http://ping.fm/lB0Mj

Monday, November 17, 2008

Managers FAQ for engineers http://ping.fm/6fNv9
Princeline now sends an email with much more informative receipt information than the previous notice of a response to a bid

Thursday, November 13, 2008

AlwaysVPN, a free virtual private networking service, gets around U.S.-only service restrictions http://alwaysvpn.com/

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

possible fatal problem for ETF as substitute for index funds is commission when adding $$, except for reinvestment
Google Reader now offers automatic translation of feeds http://ping.fm/7RaZj

Monday, November 10, 2008

Cambodia-Vietnam agreement brings Trans-Asian railway closer http://ping.fm/yhNjy
troll under a bridge spotted in Google StreetView http://ping.fm/al7Tv

Sunday, November 09, 2008

Reservations at El Bulli http://ping.fm/RksM0
China's new "theme" towns http://ping.fm/sbg98
seeing a large number of phishing emails from China posing as mail fro Kellen Creative and Microsoft

Saturday, November 08, 2008

Bokor Cambodia

Interesting article on an apparently recent trip to Bokor. The article mentions the road is currently closed.

Bokor figures prominently in the 2002 movie City of Ghosts. I see that Google Earth/Maps now has high resolution imagery of the immediate area

Friday, November 07, 2008

11 Great Tools for Making VoIP Calls on the iPhone http://ping.fm/ODr9p

Thursday, November 06, 2008

Private Cloud Storage: Facts You Need to Know http://ping.fm/5lHzs

Monday, November 03, 2008

New Yorker digital edition doesn't display on Firefox 3. Ok with IE.

Sunday, November 02, 2008

Trans-Eurasia Information Network 3 funded http://ping.fm/J58W0
new urban area covering 3,000 ha is expected to be created near Luang Prabang, Laos http://ping.fm/qpnum
Control alternative minimum tax (AMT) exposure http://ping.fm/bK9su

Saturday, November 01, 2008

Berkeley College Prep Counselors and Associated Information

Here's some summary information and extracts about college preparation counselors local to Berkeley (California).

From Berkeley "Parents of Teens" newsletter, 31 Oct 08
College prep counselor needed for high school junior
-------------------------------------------
I can highly recommend Diane Ruyffelaere. I've been working with her for
several years on the BHS College Application Handbook and she really knows
both what the colleges are looking for in students (and on applications), and
how to help students define what they are looking for in choosing a college.
She can work with your daughter on finding several colleges that are good fits
for her, on preparing for the SAT and/or ACT tests, and/or on getting that
college  essay written--before the start of Senior year! She knows her stuff
and is super friendly and helpful. She's working with my son right now, and
it's making the whole process of just finding a college a lot less stressful now
than it was looking a few months ago. She can be reached at druyffelaere@lmi.net

Good luck!
Nancy

-------------------------------------------
Ellen Lerner is great-- Intelligent, experienced, kind,
and resourceful.  She is on the North Oakland/Berkeley
border, and her phone number is 510-652-7222.
--Stephanie, parent of BHS senior
 Not Berkeley specific
College Discussion at College Confidential,...discussion forum for college admissions, financial aid, SAT prep
Google Win Firefox Toolbar beta doesn't open bookmark multiple tabs, just the last one. General distribution toolbar ok.

Friday, October 31, 2008

Google Apps includes a 99.9% SLA for Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Talk http://googleappsupdates.blogspot.com/2008/10/slas-available-for-gmail-google.html
Google Calendar now finds next available time for multiple person/conference room scheduling http://ping.fm/2n3d3

Thursday, October 30, 2008

HP Mini 1000 netbook laptop attractive except for proprietary USB flash; see also Lenovo S10

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Google Apps adds experimental "Labs" functions http://ping.fm/0QlSP
Microsoft SensorMap: datacenter facility temperature, seismic data? http://ping.fm/ITmhw
How will Darkstrand - National LambdaRail announcement affect datacenter placement?
National LambaRail (NLR) partially commercialized http://ping.fm/Djn9E
GMail Labs navbar drag and drop function useful with new GMail lab gadgets
Blu-ray being killed by upsampling DVD players? http://ping.fm/C4gER
New Gmail lab gadgets: Calendar and Docs http://ping.fm/kIkjf

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Bellsouth Engineering Standards for CO Equipment NEBS http://ping.fm/vviFD
CPUC, ILECs, CLECs, and CENIC informal meeting on using Caltrans right of way for dark fiber
Back to looking at NEBS standards for co-location space FAQ at http://ping.fm/I0DEi
meebo not working for me with Firefox 3, but ok with IE. No recent changes I can think of.

Monday, October 27, 2008

Nietzsche used a typewriter http://ping.fm/lXg8W
Microsoft Azure cloud services operating system http://ping.fm/xrcfW
Google Earth now available for iPhone http://ping.fm/GxUY6
Lexar Media 8GB High Speed Mini Flash Drive FireFly Jump Drive USB 2.0 - JDFF8GB-431 $15 incl shipping http://ping.fm/yuV1H
DNKT8MY IBM ticket on 90W AC/DC slim adapter http://ping.fm/EY4ZI

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Potential Next Big Web Use Refinement: Ubiquity http://ping.fm/u9lmc

Friday, October 24, 2008

Info on availability of Twitter firehose, comprehensive feed http://ping.fm/DedhP
Vision for research networks in Europe http://ping.fm/KggXm
123people people search now in US http://ping.fm/u0CuQ
Amazon EC2 new 99.95% annual SLA (4h23m downtime/yr) http://aws.amazon.com/ec2-sla/
Mission Street Food in San Francisco; Every Thursday at 21st and Mission http://ping.fm/zLH3T
Shut down idle computers on your network automatically http://ping.fm/vAZTh
Dual-fiber pair, 1.28-Tbit/sec DWDM project will connect Nigeria, Ghana, and Portugal. Later it will extend to Angola and South Africa http://ping.fm/I2rSA
Northern Tier Network Consortium (NTNC) selected Infinera for optical network linking nine states from Washington to Illinois http://ping.fm/hrE47
Yapta forecast cost of $219 for a flight that I then ticketed for $129. After ticketing, the forecast still shows $219.
Need to add intelligence to electrical grid http://ping.fm/DgNnL

Thursday, October 23, 2008

ETF or Mutual Fund: How to Decide? http://ping.fm/MWz4q
Investors Are Selling Mutual Funds at Record Speed (but Morningstar say this is probably bad tactics) http://ping.fm/Q5Fy9
Buffalo’s LinkStation Mini 1TB palm size fanless network attached storage RAID 0/1 RJ45/USB http://ping.fm/IC8Fs
Motorola combines WIPS security with WLAN access points http://ping.fm/Knvmp

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Dark fiber construction in California in areas controlled by Caltrans Encroachment Permit manual especially sec 600 http://ping.fm/9hgMI
9 "must have" OpenOffice extensions http://ping.fm/xVBAC
GMail now has canned response feature. Enable using Gmail Labs
NPR: Best Foreign Books You've Never Heard Of http://ping.fm/zx8eI

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

How to protect your trademark globally, including China http://ping.fm/v4Fb5
How assisted GPS works http://ping.fm/NElT4
Plan to join LAN, SAN and high-performance computing applications into one datacenter network fabric http://ping.fm/mZGsM

Monday, October 20, 2008

Google Gears can now update FireEagle with location info, but it's not that accurate (one sample so far)

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Perspective on recently publicized wireless WPA attack http://ping.fm/E9XG7
fall in U.S. gasoline prices last week means Chinese motorists now pay more for gas than US http://ping.fm/diuNZ
Rong Klua Market trade at Aranyaprathet Thailand resumed Friday after 2 day suspension following Preah Vihear skirmish

Saturday, October 18, 2008

China is set to launch an experiment in securities shorting and margin trading http://ping.fm/sBIuA
New Thailand frequent traveler card to be issued http://ping.fm/AwGCH

Friday, October 17, 2008

Tweetdeck black icon in taskbar very difficult to see on gray-black background
Video visualization of global air traffic http://ping.fm/IPBfF
Shanghai-Beijing train info http://ping.fm/OkrMv
Openoffice 3.0 Vista 64 install inhibited by many poorly identified running background processes

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Need to find a better way of specifying the billing period for professional services in Zoho Invoice
IBM's business analyst tools and best practices. Mostly keyed to IBM products. http://ping.fm/lP8f4
IBM's emerging tech has a twitter feed alphaworks

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Vuze user signup window can't be resized to expose confirmation button. Need to tab to expose all fields. UI error.
Vuze (was Azureus) bittorrent client now available in version 4.0 http://www.vuze.com/app

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Emerging best day to day uses of twitter: daily pizza update from cheeseboard; tracking packages from trackthis
Openoffice distro servers crash, but 3.0 easily available using bittorrent http://ping.fm/GAI1t

Costa Rica Sea Turtle Project

Some links about opportunities for working with sea turtles in Costa Rica.

Volunteer Adventures
Volunteer Abroad 
Ecology Project International
OpenOffice 3.0.0 general release in P2P Torrent distro http://ping.fm/e5yEj

Monday, October 13, 2008

Financially "wounded" but useful services like meebo and twitter http://ping.fm/vsx6m
LHR Heathrow door to door transport http://ping.fm/zYyl1
OpenStreetMap data can be used in Garmin GPS, replacing the need for purchased map data www.openstreetmap.org

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Credit cards: Risky borrowers with low credit scores account for roughly 30% of outstanding credit-card debt, compared with 11% of mortgage debt http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_42/b4104024799703.htm
Guide to Google Analytics from ex Urchin (Google Analytics staffer) http://ping.fm/i6xlN

Friday, October 10, 2008

Blackberry Bold quality issues delay or suspend deployment http://ping.fm/q28TP
wondering about practical risk that wifi WPA2 is not secure. Coverage of Global Security Systems report at http://ping.fm/KLLQL
Analysis of what Google Gears offers http://ping.fm/AVo6M
AlertThingy alerts for twitter, FriendFeed, Flickr http://ping.fm/DzYrN
wondering if twitter search is reliable for trending topics http://ping.fm/a7yUr
IBM's virtual Forbidden City (Palace Museum), Beijing, China http://ping.fm/YIlsG

Thursday, October 09, 2008

Google releases additional IMAP controls for GMail http://ping.fm/psQKD
IBM's business collaboration web tool http://ping.fm/K3MGj
Twitter directory by profession / job category + tools http://justtweetit.com/

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

A group of skydivers has completed the first parachute jump over the world's highest peak, Mount Everest. http://ping.fm/KB4uW
received Google Docs server error, "retry later." Is it a production service or not?
AIG "junket" seems actually to be an incentive for independent agents who sell AIG products http://ping.fm/tWD3k
Next level of Google Alert type function with http://www.yotify.com/ ?

Thursday, October 02, 2008

Need a (free) way to transcribe podcasts. More bandwidth in reading.

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Podcast:
Extreme Transaction Processing, Low Latency and Performance http://ping.fm/6EDs1
Google Maps now includes the Great Barrier Reef http://ping.fm/s7gbp
Installed OpenProj 1.4, desktop replacement of Microsoft Project http://ping.fm/5bd7G
Gmail search will find 000439743, but not 439743. Huh?
finding that iPhone needed a power on reset to get wi-fi to display network info such as IP address, router, etc.
Park and play music (mp3 only currently) in the cloud http://ping.fm/xWwGe
Restaurant meets video game http://ping.fm/RVfMB

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Late start guide to college savings http://ping.fm/6yA3z

Monday, September 29, 2008

Hotwire seems to be unable to provide rental car prices for the last few hours
NDHS has a Wikipedia entry http://ping.fm/b5rkF(Sherman_Oaks)

Old posting on Military "Secrets"

Ran across this.

Newsgroups: sci.military
From: he...@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Date: 26 Mar 92 01:36:36 GMT
Local: Wed, Mar 25 1992 6:36 pm
Subject: Dirty Little Secrets, a mini-review
From he...@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)


"Dirty Little Secrets", subtitled "Military information you're not supposed
to know", by James F. Dunnigan and Albert A. Nofi, William Morrow 1990.


Quick summary: disappointing, don't bother.


There is very little in this book that lives up to either the title or
the subtitle. It would be fine preparation for a military variant of
Trivial Pursuit, but that's about all. There are interesting tidbits
here and there, but it's not worth the price. I expected better from
Dunnigan.

This was all the more disappointing because it *could* have been a
fascinating, if perhaps slightly thinner, book if the authors had really
done some digging. There *are* dirty little secrets that you're not
supposed to know. (Samples... After the first operational Polaris
missiles were already at sea, it was discovered that their nuclear
warheads were defective and would not work. Nobody knows whether
Minuteman missiles could be launched from the operational Minuteman
silos, because every attempt to launch one from an operational-type
silo failed. [The Vandenberg training silos, which have launched many,
are a totally different design.] The great USAF-USN "shootout" between
Falcon and Sidewinder ended in humiliation for the USAF when repeated
attempts failed to so much as *launch* a Falcon. Aluminum armor is so
dangerous to troops behind it that Israeli soldiers will ride on the
*outside* of their aluminum-armored M113 APCs when there is risk of
serious enemy fire... and guess what the M2 Bradley uses for armor.
Flying a jet at 50 feet -- the altitude where most of them would try
to be in a real war against a dangerous opponent -- is so different
from flying at 200 feet that it takes considerable training for pilots
to fly effectively at the lower altitude, yet only two air forces in
the world train for it [the USAF not among them]. And so on.) Don't
expect to find any of them in this book.
--
GCC 2.0 is to C as SVR4 is to Unix. | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
-Dick Dunn | he...@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry
Google docs continuing to hide navigation bar when reaccessing site

Saturday, September 27, 2008

GrandCentral required addition of (currently free) minutes for Click2Call, presaging their charging for the function

Friday, September 26, 2008

How much bgp complexity can remote sites handle? Are there operational issues? It's obviously a barrier to conversion from DS3 to EGM + DS3.
Google Map Maker adds edit capability for 17 more countries, including Laos, Cambodia, Sri Lanka http://ping.fm/ODRrp
Blackberry Storm (big touch screen) screenshots. Credible iPhone competition? http://ping.fm/kOTqy
Sandisk 16GB microSD becoming available http://ping.fm/7HNsV
Ping.fm still starving hi5 of content because ping.fm doesn't post microblogs to hi5, just status and blogs

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Goodreads needs an easy way to import from Google Books > My Library
Wall Street Journal: Safe Investments to Buy Now http://ping.fm/M3C8i
Google (Apps only?) Docs navigation bar can collapse. Drag right to make it reappear

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Wall Street Journal: "Neiman Marcus offered a bleak outlook for the holidays and said its quarterly loss more than doubled"
Hot/cold aisle containment may be in conflict with fire codes http://ping.fm/49rqn
Corning says InfiniCor SX+ optical fiber 100-Gigabit Ethernet ready http://ping.fm/ab9pH
Google uses > 160 country code top level domains including Cuba http://ping.fm/1d8qh
IBM: 1 person=1TB in 2008; 16TB in 2020. flash/dedup/virtualization/dense tape http://ping.fm/tHQYh
IBM will have 13 global cloud computing centers, u=incoluding South Korea, Vietnam, India and Brazil http://ping.fm/Yrf7W
Wall Street Journal tests hotel loyalty plans, including Hilton and Hyatt http://ping.fm/bScAZ
Bandipedia - wiki for telecomm community http://ping.fm/ud9p4
Google Maps now includes blcok number info
Google Chrome still seems to be constantly refreshing meebo

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Uh oh, GrandCentral seems to be down
Yammer autofills tags allowing more lengthy tags than one might otherwise use. Neat
3% rebate from ebates on Lenovo laptop purchase with no arguing/followup. Great!
Wide variety of IT books from Sun free at http://ping.fm/xfCds
Howto magic videos www.theory11.com

Monday, September 22, 2008

Identifying a co worker in Yammer spawns an unprompted invite to them!
Android phone has brick form factor compared to iPhone. http://ping.fm/lEKxd

Sunday, September 21, 2008

looking at Yammer and Present.ly, touted as twitter for the enterprise
L-o-n-g latency to add alert to tweetbeep. Will have to time the next one. 30 seconds? What's the app infrastructure?
Tweetbeep - Alerts on keyword or domain use in Twitter

Friday, September 19, 2008

Wall Street Journal email notification lagging by 2 days again
TrackThis on Twitter needs direct msg of tracking # first with no spaces or dashes then optional name of item
Lenovo UPS shipment tracking to Bay Area: HKG 9/18 1935-ANC-ONT-OAK 9/19 0605
can't add path to Google Earth as the app reliably dies (after apparently sending a diagnostic report). Vista 32.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Gobal comparison of executive pay by the Economist http://ping.fm/puydg
Wall Street Journal email summary of today's paper lagging by 2 days?
Lenovo Thinkpad W500 4058CTO ordered 12 Sep 08;shipped 18 Sep 08
China visa info http://ping.fm/lzekm
GE & Google want US power grid to accommodate more renewable energy. Does this, by itself, improve grid? http://ping.fm/7j0Jp

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

TripIt now has blog badge. What's the day to day value of TripIt, Dopplr, Loopt?

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Tibetan Travel Agency

Posting seen in:
ORIENTAL-LIST@hmssurprise.org

There was/is 'Tibetan Connections is an international travel agency based
in Xining, Qinghai in the traditional Tibetan province of Amdo."
I talked to them last January and they seemed knowledgable of
Qinghai/Tibet but Google, since 11 Aug 08, only finds a cache of the
website ...which could be for various reasons.

Tibetan Connections
Guo Ji Cun Gong Yu
Building 5
Lete Youth Hostel
18th Floor
Xining, Qinghai China
Email: info@tibetanconnections.com
Tel: 86 971 820 3271

The Lete hostel is handy to the middle of Xining, 15 mins walk from the
main streets. TConnection was on the 16th flr.

When back in Beijing May 2008, I was told I'd need a police permit to bus
from Golmud to Dunhuang but it was issuable within a day.

Dave Nevin, Macau.
Need easier way to toggle between GrandCentral phones to ring. Setting for "location 1", setting for "location 2"?
Returning to Firefox from a few days of Google Chrome until Chrome has better bookmarking, Roboform like function, adblock

Sunday, September 14, 2008

finding it hard to tune Panoramio + Picasa. No watermark and 640 size seems best
May want to backfill previous trips on Travelpod

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Friday, September 12, 2008

why is Lenovo recovery DVD for a new Visa 64 purchase WinXP?
whoops, looks as if radiusIM does signal in the tab. Sorry
radiusIM, unlike meebo, doesn't signal in Firefox tab for new message. Easy to miss IMs unless yu hear the alert
International Dunhuang Project: The Silk Road Online;artifacts from the Eastern Silk Road http://idp.bl.uk/
radiusIM sorts buddies by the way they connect (AOL, GTalk, Yahoo, MSN) and then by groups you set up. Not good
Trying radiusIM instead of meebo. Works with Google translate bots (so far) [sent using www.radiusIM.com]
Hilton 1M point giveaway servers basically unavailable http://ping.fm/3T1nP
Thrilllist SF shills for a restaurant with a "Napa/Euro wine list features 150 bottles under $60"... Is this supposed to be affordable? http://ping.fm/cJ1ZG
An old article on UAL's 2002 bankruptcy filing resurfaced Monday as an apparently fresh report on Google's News. Stock in UA cratered http://ping.fm/7lxmH

Dash Express size

The Dash site FAQ has a Q/A about the Dash Express size.

Q: Why so big?
A: "Dash Express has a large battery to support up to 2 hours of use without a power supply. Dash Express also has three antennas - GPS, GPRS and WiFi which makes the device a larger size."

The simplistic comparison is with iPhone Gen2, though.
Google Chrome is fast without Web Accelerator but without cloud bookmarks/delicious/roboform too much trouble

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Lenovo site expires sessions prematurely. No contact info t report this sort of problem, of course
Delivered 1 of 2 new, diverse Oc3 for client, replacing DS3, for remote data center. Need to rate limit since firewall is overwhelmed.
www.seatexpert.com appears better than www.seatguru.com for UA 747 new config business seat selection
Ping.fm needs at least minimal help on site instead of turfing everything to Get.Satisfaction. Ex: difference between micro and reg blog
Lenovo nav bar at left doesn't show 17" laptops, such as W700. W700 page doesn't show current discounts http://ping.fm/YR58h
Verizon wants 48 hours notice to turn up Verizon Business circuits (OC3 in this case) including a conference bridge.
wish we'd switch from Meeting Maker 7.5 (so old that it's outside the current numbering system). Preferably to GCal.
Oops, meant to say that ping.fm apparently doesn't support microblogging for hi5, though it does support status updates and blogging
Lenovo notebook coupon USP2DAYSONLY good 11-12 Sep 08
Concerns that iTunes 8 causes Blue Screen of Death in some cases http://ping.fm/fqfH8

Yahoo oneConnect for iPhone

Can't find Yahoo oneConnect for iPhone by App search on the phone, but iTunes shows it.  Pointer from ZDNet.

Monday, September 01, 2008

Yves Klein: Leap Into the Void

It's disillusioning to read that the Yves Klein photo, Into The Void, was contrived

Ho Chi Minh Trail Laos Vietnam Travel Research

This will  be the anchor for trip planning on the Ho Chi Minh Trial in Vietname and Laos.

A good start is this post on a 6 day trip by motor bike starting from Vang Vieng to Thakhek.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Beijing Courtyard Hotels

There's a discussion going on the mailing list Discussion of travel in China on Beijing courtyard hotels.


Here are some extracts from the postings:
Some years ago we stayed at the Bamboo Garden, which was quite lovely and comfortable; here is an excerpt from their website (www.bbgh.com.cn), and though I can't vouch for the accuracy of the history which is reported, I can certainly vouch for its close-in location, helpful staff (with decent English), and a wish to go back:

"Bamboo Garden Hotel Beijing is located in a tranquil lane on the westside of Gulou, built in a classic Chinese courtyard-style. It was the private residence of Sheng Xuanhuai, the postal department minister in late Qing Dynasty, and it was also said to be the garden of Andehai, the imperial eunuch. Since the late Qing Dynasty, a succession of celebrities such as Wang Yintai, Mahansan, Dong Biwu and Kangsheng have lived here."

Joe Luttrell
===================================
2 years ago we stayed at the Haoyuan Courtyard Hotel. Although ours was a basic room, it was nicely decorated and like all the rooms, opened up into a courtyard. The breakfast was good, and the staff were amazing. We had purchased a cell phone chip at the airport and were having trouble getting it to work. One of the staff walked us down to a shop nearby, explained the situation and got it fixed for us. It was a great introduction to our first time and first night in China.

Last year we stayed at the Lusongyuan Courtyard Hotel. It too was nice, the breakfast was good, and the staff helpful. We chose it over the other as it seemed to be closer in walking distance to the places we wanted to go to, more centrally located. However, it was larger and there were more people staying there.
If we get the opportunity and are lucky enough to be able to go back, I think that I would chose the Haoyuan over the Lusongyuan, although either would be a good choice. It just seemed to be more intimate.

Marg
====================================
Some of the better new ones--in real courtyard homes--include the following.

Cote Cour

Banqiao No. 4

Autumn Garden

Red Capital Residence.

I'm sorry I don't have the details handy now, but you can Google them. The first and last are on the expensive side, but the middle two are quite reasonable and comfortable.

Paul
========================================
Paul wrote:

Some of the better new ones--in real courtyard homes--include the following.

Cote Cour
When I looked round this I thought it had been almost totally rebuilt from the ground up, I must admit, as well as overpriced (Y1295 rack for a standard room) and poorly staffed. There aren't many rooms (9 standard and 14 altogether), and the place was full when I looked at it, partly perhaps from having a quick burst of exposure in the foreign press.

Red Capital Residence.

I haven't seen this, but I'd boycott it on the grounds of its owner's sycophantic relationship to senior Party leaders, and tasteless employment of the effects of those who died in the Cultural Revolution to decorate his restaurant.

The Lusong Yuan seems to be suffering from its own popularity, as it's now used by small tour groups, and its prices have risen considerably.

At the budget end of courtyard accommodation, the Templeside House Hostel is worth a look. It's a pruced-up traditional courtyard house with friendly staff in the hush of the hutong but in walking distance of the White Dagoba Temple and other sights, major Xi Dan shopping, and Fucheng Men subway station. Dorm beds to double rooms all share modern shower facilities, laundromat, and courtyard bar. This is basic, but family-run. www.templeside.com

Peter N-H
=========================================
The Bamboo Garden is a Great hotel.

Typically the website doesn't mention that the courtyard now the Bamboo Hotel was also the residence of one of the members of the Gang of Four. This explains why there is a Nuclear Shelter (Bunker) in the garden. It is also the reason why it is so exceptionally well-preserved.

The Bamboo Garden is a 3-star hotel, however, service exceeds the 3-star service level, and almost all staff is very friendly and speaks English. Originally the rather simply decorated rooms in the northwest corner of the yard were cheap, while the luxurious rooms in the southeast corner were expensive. Popularity of the hotel has driven up prices of all rooms to the price level of an expensive 4-star hotel. Very central and convenient location.

Edwin Baak
Verizon and Equinix use different labeling for suites/cages and panels. Equinix won't terminate on Verizon devices.
Reducing TCO in datacenter design: big idea-spread across multiple, lower Tier sites http://ping.fm/rW0Ms

Monday, August 25, 2008

Road to Ta Moan Thom to Be Built

Item in the Phnom Penh Post:
Prime Minister Hun Sen ordered military engineers to build a new 9km road from Prey Veng village in Oddar Meanchey province to the Ta Moan Thom temple complex near the Thai-Cambodian border in a cabinet meeting last week [week of 18 Aug 08].
...
Thai soldiers occupied the Ta Moan Thom temple complex following an escalation in the dispute at Preah Vihear that began in July. They withdrew on August 5 after an agreement was reached between Thai and Cambodian leaders in Oddar Meanchey province, but appear to have reoccupied the ruins over the weekend, military commanders say.

The new road will run from Prey Veng village to a checkpoint gate constructed by Thai forces to prevent civilians and soldiers from accessing the temple. ...
 The complex of three temples is also known as Ta Muen, Ta Muen Toch, and Ta Muen Thom.  Even if Cambodia occupies the primary border temple, Ta Muen Thom, it's probably not realistic for them to occupy the two other smaller sites farther down the road.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Netflix continuing shipping outage is making me rethink their utility
BlackBerry Bold and Apple iPhone comparison http://ping.fm/WeaRA

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Useful consequence of the Preah Vihear Thai-Khymer conflict is getting the road there paved from Anlong Veng

Monday, August 11, 2008

GMail outage today, though temporary, was very inconvenient and makes it difficult to evangelize for company conversion
Amazon universal wish list button adds to Amazon wish list from any web site http://ping.fm/VUowi

Friday, August 08, 2008

discovering independent music at www.stumbleaudio.com
Google Reader offers item share and unshare, but only share with note, not unshare (with note)

Monday, August 04, 2008

Meebo not connecting at all; AOL Express (web interface to AOL IM) not recognizing userid/password that works with client
Dumbed down iPhone Nano for pay as you go / prepaid for end of year holidays?
Today first day that FlyClear at OAK may have been worth it. 10 minutes wait in "Expert" line. No ID check for Clear
Loopt on iPhone slow when locating people outside US (for example, Italy)

Saturday, August 02, 2008

GrandCentral web pages on Firefox 3 on Vista with 24" screen have stray lines of vertical graduated shading
Blackberry Bold now being sold off the shelf in Hong Kong at PCCW Mobile and 1010. http://ping.fm/MXavS

Friday, August 01, 2008

GrandCentral needs 3 way/conference calling
New Google Maps "avoid tolls" option works great for dumb toll road from MCO to Lake Buena Vista

Thursday, July 31, 2008

Garmin China navigator on microSD, received today, looks promising with lots of POIs. Doesn't match Google Earth lat/lon though
BeerLao to (possibly) get wider distribution. Hooray! http://ping.fm/W2GNv

Monday, July 28, 2008

Lightweight "Travel" GPS in Direct Sunlight

I'm looking for a GPS that I can put on the handlebar of a moto (small motorcycle) or bicycle when traveling instead of having my Garmin Vista HCx in the carabiner stretch holster (Garmin part 010-10480-00) I've currently been using.  The idea is to be able to view while riding, instead of having to stop/slow down to look at the screen.

Requirements:
--readable in direct sunlight
--waterproof
--relatively lightweight (especially for the bicycle scenarior)
--readable screen
--addon maps.

Other considerations:
--batteries (removable chargable; AA; non-removable)
--screen size
--controls (touch, button, manipulate relatively safely while moving)

Evaluation so far:
--the nuvi 270 isn't readable in direct sunlight as the HCx and 76CSx are, regardless of what I see in online reviews.
Tiger Direct offering Blackberry Bold for preorder, expected September. US$650

Sunday, July 27, 2008

iPhone (G1 orG2) for US; unlocked [future] GSM Blackberry Bold with local SIM for rest of world?

Friday, July 25, 2008

thinking about which Google services really need the overhead of httpS security. Maybe not Reader.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

twinkle app on iphone dies when trying to display nearby tweets
GrandCentral is down (now in apparent proper format for outage tweets)
GrandCentral site apparently down
Yelp iPhone search brings up weird results. Search for Middle Eastern in 90630 area returned a veterinarian instead of a restaurant

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Thai and Cambodian Troop Buildup at Preah Vihear

BBC reports:
Cambodia and Thailand moved more troops into an ancient border temple, as a stand-off triggered by a territorial dispute entered its third day.

Four hundred Thai troops and 800 Cambodian soldiers are now stationed at Preah Vihear temple, a Cambodian military chief said.

I wonder if more mines have been cleared in the last couple of years since it didn't appear that there's not that much room past the no-man's land to deploy a lot of troops safely. The condition of the approaches favor reinforcements from the Thai side.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Shazam iPhone music identification app working out better than Midomi, which seems to have more function, but has server busy a lot

Monday, July 14, 2008

Hotwire is showing grossly misleading prices. The $28.90/day car rental turns into $60.95 when selected

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Introduction Evernote iPhone app may make Evernote more useful than Google Notebook

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Apparently can't edit Loopt address details and it won't look them up to avoid filling them in

Friday, July 11, 2008

iPhone 2.0 update allows sync with Google contacts in addition to Yahoo. Yahoo offers more contact fields.
iPhone must be in cell range to complete 2.0 update. Otherwise brick. Is this documented?
iPhone showing as connected after 2.0 upgrade, though not. Won't reset. Uh oh.
iPhone 2 update took 6 tries to get started. Initially no update shown as available.
AT&T 3G coverage viewer at http://ping.fm/zlZ4P doesn't zoom and center under Firefox 3 or IE

Thursday, July 10, 2008

ypmap.com for Hong Kong doesn't work with Firefox 3/Vista. IE ok
dopplr bot receives twitter direct messages to add trips.
iPhone App: Lonely Planet Mandarin phrasebook, free
new HP laptop dv5 disks are slow 5400rpm. Maybe dv7t will have 7200 as now available

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

is Google's Lively worth taking for a spin or wait until there's a Mac client?
Google Apps Docs spreadsheets and Firefox 3 don't seem to be having the same constantly refreshing issues of last week

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

still can't sync GrandCentral contacts with anything else (Plaxo for Gmail/Yahoo, Yahoo for iPhone). Maybe I'm missing something.

Saturday, July 05, 2008

was pointed to an Shanghai interactive street map at http://ping.fm/xscxc

Friday, July 04, 2008

Wordspy, first use of coined words/phrases, as a trend indicator. http://www.wordspy.com/

Thursday, July 03, 2008

Google now fully mature with several simultaneously unreliable services. Predictable but frustrating

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

keeping track of cheap budget hotels in China. http://ping.fm/hVnhs
Firefox 3 + Google Apps Docs spreadsheet [still] continuously refreshing. IE is ok.

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

Google Apps Docs continuously refreshing under Firefox 3/Vista inhibiting reading or updating

Thursday, June 26, 2008

thinking how to instill awareness of process engineering when perceived as culturally antagonistic
lurching toward EGM installs. Need let art and more process engineering.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

TSA and Verified Traveler/Clear unclear on the concept that butting in line is not polite and bad for customer relations

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Critical appraisal of HP's Brightview Infinity screens for laptops parrots the press releases
Google servers flaky the last couple of days. Yesterday Docs had a hiccup; today Gmail with "Oops... a server error occurred and your email was not sent. (#6502)"
Good 6 minute video of interview of Guy Ashton on finding fiber near proposed data centers http://ping.fm/0lF22

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

#PricelineReports Priceline win: car LGB Hertz Economy 17-19 Jun 08 $28 bid; $112 total; compare Hotwire $130; Orbitz $225
Google Apps: Nice message received, sure to cause increased confidence: "Server Error, Try Later"!

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Does Long Beach Airport LGB still have free wifi? Can't find it the last couple of trips.
Ping.fm has an interface to Plurk, but not FriendFeed
What are best practices for modern co-lo / data center design for medium, small, and extra small / hut resident?

Monday, June 09, 2008

Gmail lab signature tweak is really worthwhile. Quick links has potential, but haven't used it yet after enabling.

Friday, June 06, 2008

Extension to import/export documents between OpenOffice and Google Docs or Zoho http://ping.fm/SSnww

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Hilton Hampton Inn Buena Park takeaway: noisy. Noise from adjacent rooms, hallways, ice machine, plumbing, air-con
Jetblue's email test adding functionality with Exchange corporate email and webmail: Gmail, AOL Mail, Hotmail and Windows Live Mail
WSJ report: UAL plans to cut 6 of its 747s. United has 30, the majority owned rather than leased.

Monday, June 02, 2008

Dash Express discounted $100 to $299 at Amazon after being out only 2 months. Lighter weight model coming? http://ping.fm/HkUox
3 hours of early morning fiber jumper cleanup at SVL without knocking the network off the air...

Sunday, June 01, 2008

#PricelineReports Priceline win: car LGB Economy 3-5 Jun 08 $22 bid; $89 total; compare with Hotwire $111; Orbitz $225

Firefox 2: Failure in Chrome Registration

For what seems like months Firefox 2 has been giving me the unhelpful error message 3 times on startup:
Firefox could not install this add-on due to Failure in Chrome registration. Please contact the author about this problem.
but I've been too lazy to deal with it. A simple search turned up the fix, which is restart Firefox, but, when restarting, right click the Firefox icon and "Run as Administrator."

Following restarts don't need this.
Windows Vista Business got SP1 from auto updates today; Vista Home Premium got it weeks ago

Friday, May 30, 2008

#priceline Priceline win: hotel Sunnyvale 1-2 Jun 08 $45 bid; $58 total; compare with Hotwire $72; Country Inn & Suites site $195

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Xpenser needs recurring trip templates. Google Talk / GTalk interface would be nice as would placeholder entries with blank/zero expense.
Trying Xpenser for tracking expenses. Seems to have a lot of input methods: IM, email, twitter,sms, jott. www.xpenser.com

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

George Anders piece in WSJ on why airlines (30% hedged) don't hedge fuel as Southwest (70%) does. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121192242646723961.html?mod=djemITP

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

tabs for Google services (Calendar, etc.) in Google Apps are http, not httpS Not a good thing.

Monday, May 26, 2008

twine needs tag suggest and autocomplete (or better tag auto-population). The tags it populates currently include a lot of noise
Priceline win: car LGB Economy 27-29 May 08 $22 bid; $88 total; compare with Hotwire $138; Costco Alamo $153; Orbitz $225

Great Wall Advice Compilation

A compilation of advice on viewing Chinese Great Wall sites, mostly in the Beijing vicinity:
===================
Great Wall close to Beijing?

I'd recommend trying to see the Great Wall at Simatai. It is in Guidebooks. I believe Simatai is the furthest publicly open section that still remains an easy day trip from Beijing. It takes about two hours by private car to reach it. I suspect that the difficulty arriving there by public transportation is the reason it is not smothered by hordes of tourists. There will be other people at Simatai, but nothing like the choking crowds at Badaling (which is easily accessible by public bus).

Simatai also offers the advantage that it has some infrastructure, but it has not been extensively or obtrusively rebuilt. Unlike Badaling, there is no Starbucks or movie theater. Some bricks are new, but most are not. It's very easy to find and photograph bricks bearing their original dates of manufacture. There is a cable car and tram to take one most of the way up the mountain (about 2 kilometers from the parking lot, over relatively inhospitable terrain), and then there are steps built into the mountain to walk up the last 600 meters or so.

The Wall at Simatai location is built along the crest of a steep mountain ridge. The views are breathtaking. Even though the wall is only open for about 1 Km at this stretch, I did not feel deprived in the least. There are many watchtowers and guard houses to explore. If I recall, the guardhouses appeared to be their original condition. After one walks along the wall through several watchtowers, a fence blocks the rest of the way with the announcement that beyond this spot the wall is not open to the public. I would not have ventured past this area anyway, for safety reasons. There are sheer cliffs and crumbling brick.

When I visited Badaling last Fall, it was a huge disappointment after having been to Simatai. The Wall is still spectacular, and I think the portion open at Badaling may be longer, but there is no comparison otherwise.

Alex
========================
David Kasper wrote:

In reality the Great Wall at Jinshanling is the furtherst that one can go and still make it a day trip from Beijing.

Indeed, the turning is less than 20km further on and it's a shorter distance from there to the Wall itself than at Simatai.

It takes about two hours by private car to reach it.

That time will have been cut, or will shortly be cut, by the opening of the Beijing to Chengde expressway. This might also affect the volume of visitors, but there are certainly currently far fewer there than at Simatai, which is the darling of now innumerable tours run at (often absurdly high) prices by budget accommodation. Still, you wouldn't call Simatai crowded.

There are even fewer people than either at Panlong Shan, which is between the two (from a driving point of view). The three sites run west to east: Panlong Shan, Jin Shan Ling, Simatai. Panlong Shan might well be the best choice for Wendy, since just a little bit of work has been done to keep it intact, possibly quite illegally by local peasants who appear to be running the show and may not in fact have proper permission to do so, although a proper ticket is issued. The entrance fee is half that of the other sites, the decay of the Wall just enough to make it romantic yet easy to walk on, and there's none of the massive rebuilding to be found (although also to be walked away from) at Jin Shan Ling and Simatai. There are no cable cars, chair lifts, zip lines, or souvenir sellers of any kind. The problem with souvenir sellers is most intense at Simatai, and on the walk from Jin Shan Ling to there. They cling limpet-like to visitors for long periods and can completely spoil the experience for some.

It's possible to walk from here to Jin Shan Ling in about five hours at a steady dither, but about 1.5 hours of that is spent off the Wall as a military camp has to be skirted, and without detailed directions it's not hard to get lost.

I suspect that the difficulty arriving there by public transportation is the reason it is not smothered by hordes of tourists.

But in the case of all three sites it's only a matter of getting on a Chengde bus and jumping off at the turning, then either walking or negotiating with waiting transportation.

Simatai also offers the advantage that it has some infrastructure, but it has not been extensively or obtrusively rebuilt. Unlike Badaling, there is no Starbucks or movie theater.

Wasn't there a 'Lonely Planet Restaurant' last time I was there?

Mutianyu has the benefit that it can be reached at weekends on Chinese tour buses, and it's a very green site; busy, still with some backpacker tours, but not as busy as Ba Da Ling (nowhere is). It's cursed with souvenir sellers, but under better control, a chair lift, and a sled for coming down.

Anyone wanting a quick trip would be better to choose Juyong Guan over Ba Da Ling: It's nearer and has one tenth of the visitors (or less). This is a long swooping section completely rebuilt about ten years ago, no more or less authentic than Ba Da Ling. Souvenir sellers are kept under tight control and made to stay behind a line. It's easily reached by express aircon bus for ¥12 or less.

Decayed, not legally open but well-known, and not easy by public transport, would be Huanghua Cheng (where people walk round big signs forbidding entry, and pay local farmers a few kuai to walk through their orchards), and Jiankou, which is exceptionally steep even by Wall standards, and with its surface very badly broken up. It's possible to walk from here to Mutianyu, but serious boots and a head for heights both needed.

Result: For Wendy's requirements I'd recommend Panlong Shan, turning both left and right after mounting the Wall, with Jin Shan Ling as second choice. The Panlong Shan entrance (it's a 3km walk from there to the base of the Wall) is on the right immediately before the entrance to the Gu Bei Kou tunnel. Make an early start, buy a ticket for Gu Bei Kou on any Chengde-bound bus, and hop off at the entrance. On the way back cross the road, and flag down any bus with the Beijing characters in the window. Best to be doing that by 4pm or so. You have the other alternative of taking a bus going to Miyun, and a bus back to Beijing from there, the last one leaving around 6.30pm.

Peter N-H
May 26, 2008 at 10:29 AM
iphone case summary with comments http://ping.fm/M968M

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Malware test: use www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=

QQ messaging

Signed up for the QQ messaging system, largely used in China, on English page. Now to see if QQ will/can be supported by meebo http://ping.fm/iZACr

update: Ok, QQ supported on GAIM structure, whi9ch had been discussed in 2006, so not impossible for meebo, just not now.
Buying a high end piano^Great piece in 22 May 08 WSJ by Anne Marie Chaker on buying a Steinway http://ping.fm/78Phm
Google Health^How does a non-expert in health issues decide if there's sufficient value at this point in the deployment?
reviews are all over the map for Olympus Stylus 1030SW. It would be great to have a ruggedized camera
can't find hi-res imagery of Pittsfield, MA to locate Crewdson photo of burning house seen in June '08 Smithsonian

Saturday, May 24, 2008

What's fatal about the interaction of Firefox on Vista and Google Maps? It reliably kills Firefox. IE is fine.

Friday, May 23, 2008

WWAN 3G data speed in Garden Grove CA 22 May 08, 7AM using Verizon very slow. Verizon points to MSoft kb 940646, though that wasn't it
why is GMail link on iGoogle http: and not https:? (On GMail page Google service links are https: however)

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Getting Help with Google Apps

So, as an extra duty, not assigned, I've been trying out Google Apps for a work site and have become frustrated working through the on line help for user management.

(The backstory is that we started with Google Team. Some users were invited, but not registered. We converted to Google Apps Standard Edition. The users who were invited, but didn't register don't show up on the user accounts management page and can't be deleted. There's some reason to believe that the stale invitations with the associated accounts will be deleted, perhaps in 5 days. Maybe not, though.)

Anyway, here's a posting in the Google Apps Admin help group that's seems helpful.

So if you are like me, you needed help and couldn't find out how to
reach the Google Apps Support Team. Sure, you signed into Google Apps
with an Administrator account, and you clicked Help. Then you found a
tantalizing little link labeled "How do I contact the support team?"
which takes you to:
https://www.google.com/support/a/bin/static.py?page=contacting_suppor...
Then you hit brick wall number 1. No email address anywhere on that
page. In fact, here's the text so you can read it yourself:
********************
Need to contact our support team directly? We provide limited email
support for a small set of critical issues, where a service that was
setup correctly has stopped working (not including POP or IMAP). While
we read every email that we receive, you'll only hear from us
(generally in two business days) if we need to collect more
information. Please search the Help Center for instructions on domain
verification and activating email. If you need to report a service
that stopped working, we suggest visiting the Frequently Reported
Issues page.
********************
Then you started digging through the Help Center and the Discussion
Groups, and they said either... 1) log in as an administrator, go to
domain settings, go to account information, then find the section with
your Customer PIN: and the contact information on how to reach them.
Bang! Brick wall number 2. Sure you found your Customer PIN, but
there is mysteriously no link / email or anything else to use it with.
or 2) you find some random post in the Discussion Groups which says
you just need to email them at 'apps-supp...@google.com' with your
Customer PIN and screenshots right? Did that, I got a nice rejection
message stating:
*********************
Hello,
Thanks for your interest in Google Apps. This is an automated
response.
The message that you submitted won't reach our support team.
If you need assistance, please visit the Help Center at
http://www.google.com/support/a, or by clicking 'Help' in your control
panel. You can find answers to many frequently asked questions, and
get in touch with our support team by clicking 'Contact us.'
**********************
Feel like you are running in circles? Or did you get sneaky like me?
I followed the link above, and I was back where I started. I found
the link that "How do I contact the support team?" is supposed to take
you to, copied it and googled it looking for a cached version. Bingo!
The original support section read:
***********************
Need to email our support team? Classify your issue. Based on the type
of issue you're experiencing, you'll have the option to email us your
question or ask the admin community in the Discussion Group. We
generally respond within two business days via email.
************************
The phrase "Classify your issue" was a hyperlink to
http://google.com/support/a/bin/request.py
Finally, oh wait! Another brick wall! There is no "Other" section
under "Administration" / "Get help with a technical issue" which is
where my issue would fall. NOTE: My problem is the bad user count
issue many others had. So then you methodically search through each
of the technical support issues searching for the correct email
address or link to finally reach support and....
http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/request.py?contact_type=technical
You found a webform.. hooray, and it has a field for your Customer PIN
which up until now was completely useless. You fill out the webform,
and you get an actual confirmation email later, they got the
submission. And you attach screenshots to you reply... yeah! I hope
I get some support now.
This post is for the rest of you hunting for help from the Google Apps
Team. Kudos to those of you that skipped to the bottom.
Now to find the customer PIN...

Update: Customer PIN is only needed for Premier and Education accounts

Monday, May 19, 2008

wondering who has analyzed the Google Health Ts & Cs in detail http://ping.fm/Q3x51

Friday, May 16, 2008

thinking it's too bad I can't do a bulk upload of mobile numbers to Joopz for sending SMS msgs
what was clear yesterday and seems confusing today was simply a misinterpretation of what has been obvious the whole time http://ping.fm/Jyz5D

Saturday, May 10, 2008

reviewing What a Botnet Looks Like http://ping.fm/FgUmp

Friday, May 09, 2008

Sunday, May 04, 2008

Best credit/debit card for foreign exchange http://ping.fm/Cgmsn
Whoops, don't use Box.net + Gmail, look at the comments in http://ping.fm/d0Rxb
"Send" large files by sharing them online using Gmail and Box.net http://ping.fm/JTiV8
Review use of twitterfeed for blog/news/general awareness http://ping.fm/9B6kl Example: Google http://ping.fm/eX8Re
Use WIA Windows Image Acquisition instead of TWAIN for scanning http://ping.fm/MtwjS

Saturday, May 03, 2008

Lenovo Thinkpad disk encryption is poorly explained on the Lenovo website

Thursday, May 01, 2008

Proposed Grand Central priority list: 1. service availability; 2. problem management internally; 3. problem reporting; 4. everything else
Did I complain earlier about the way that Grand Central handles extensions? I should have.

Monday, April 28, 2008

:enovo U110 11.1" WXGA 1366 x 768 Hard drive 120GB 4200rpm; res and disk speed not that impressive
Problem reports "submitted" through twitter currently go around the tracking system. How big a problem is this? Perhaps fatal except for small, immediate response issues

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

why does the brand new HP Officejet J6450 that's attached wired Ethernet always come up offline?
trying Google Sites for work planning.

Monday, April 21, 2008

GrandCentral: it's a pain not to be able to include a phone extension in the contact info. I put it in the remarks as a work around
Just glommed onto TwittEarth. Great visualization!

Saturday, April 19, 2008

wishes I was riding motos in Thailand. Or Lao. Or, really, anywhere in SE Asia...
Verisign Openid site seems really slow (or is it just AT&T again)
What's the "best" prepaid mobile in China that allows cheap international calls, with a long expiry?
Ok, iPhone ping.fm app now working (but why not yesterday? And character count only shown *after* composition)

Friday, April 18, 2008

Declare temporary victory at UCSC and reward self with great lunch at Sri on Water St
attend UCSC dark fiber status meeting; fiber test OAK-UCD?

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Thursday, March 27, 2008

GPS: Garmin Nuvi versus Dash Comparison

I've been reading reviews of the Dash Express, which is just being dropped into general availability, though it appears that Amazon won't be shipping it until 27 March, 2008.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of data available yet comparing the Dash Express with currently available devices. Since I need to do this anyway, I'll come up with something for the Dash Express, my now back level Garmin nuvi 650, and a current traffic enabled Garmin nuvi.

----------------

Ok, first possibly fatal problem is that it's not clear how the Dash Express can be transferred between cars, which is a problem since I most often need GPS when in a rental car. And, since I travel a lot in rental cars in California, I can't affix the mount to the window, by law. Dash support says they're aware of the issue and it's not a straightforward fix, since the unit is bulky and heavy.

(to be continued)

Thursday, March 20, 2008

GrandCentral Issues: Click2Call Problems Resurface

The last couple of days I've been noticing that GrandCentral's Click2Call is either unresponsive or takes multiple invocations to call my local number so that I can call out.

I don't see an outage notice, but, then, GrandCentral doesn't display outage notices in a prominent place. It would be helpful to have the range of informational --> critical outage messages in an easy to find place on their site.

Saturday, March 08, 2008

D-Link DIR-655 Router

Picked this up at CostCo in Cypress, since, for whatever reason, it's not at the local one in Richmond, CA.

(Update: ok, it turns out that Richmond does have it. It was just in the locked case.)

There's a free support number, 888.822.9299, for Costco members, 24/7.

First step is to print out the settings from the old Netgear WGT624 router.

Update: no sweat setting this up and making it operational. I need to do some refining on the settings, though.

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

ShifD: Share Note, Place, Link Between Phone and Computer

Starting to try out ShifD to interchange info between a PC, using either a web site or an Adobe AIR application, and a mobile phone using SMS messages.

Initially I tried out the function using just the web site, under my latest thinking of avoiding PC based applications, but I'm interested in Adobe AIR. So, I'm probably further junking up my laptop (and further tethering myself to a particular machine, but...)

LinkedIn Makeovers

A pretty spartan listing of tips on LinkedIn makeovers, with some focus on Guy Kawasakai's postings:
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/01/ten_ways_to_use.html

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/01/linkedin_profil.html

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

iPhone: Handset Speaker Stopped Working

After using my Iphone with the iPhone earbuds this morning, I took out the ear buds and found that the handset speaker/ringer (as opposed to the speakerphone) stopped working.

After powering the phone off and on a couple of times, as part of trouble shooting I found:
--speakerphone function worked
--ear buds worked
--bluetooth worked.

I tried the Apple iPhone support site and did two of the non-destructive resets without success. Just about the time I was ready to trek to an Apple store to have them fool around with it, I plugged in and unplugged the ear buds a couple of times and now the handset speaker/ringer works again as desired.

Is there some sort of mechanical switch that is tripped when the plug for the ear buds is inserted that stuck in the wrong position?

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Timebridge: Repetitive Meetings

Now that Timebridge has Google Calendar integration, I'm trying to use it for more of my meetings among those who don't share the same calendar system.

I ran into a case today where I want to schedule a meeting each Monday, but, as far as I can tell, there's no way to set up a standing meeting. If the Timebridge conference call function is to be used, it also should be available for each of the meeting repetitions.

Update: I received a note from Timebridge support that adding support for repetitive meetings is on their development roadmap. (5 Mar 08)

Friday, February 15, 2008

Grand Central: Site Not Responsive

This will teach me to recommend a beta service. The Grand Central site seems just plain non-responsive for the last 1/2 hour or so.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Road Conditions in the Anlong Veng, Cambodia Area

Babu posted about some activities in the Anlong Veng area that included some information about traveling there from Siem Reap. I commented on the blog entry, but there wasn't any followup. Anyway, so as not to lose the thought, I'll repeat most of the comment here.

I appreciated the news that there is road improvement progress between Siem Reap and Anlong Veng. Now that the independent tourist overland route between Poipet and Siem Reap is becoming more and more expensive, overland to Siem Reap from the north is becoming more and more attractive.

Is the road to the north sealed much past Banteay Srei? I understand from your blog entry that the part that's not paved is graded. Is it your impression that the grading will extend past Anlong Veng to the border?

I was also interested to read about the school building efforts. Is it your impression that school and library construction efforts such as Room to Read's (http://www.roomtoread.org/countries/cambodia.html) have been effective? I realize that this question may be too broad to answer.

Saturday, February 09, 2008

Handheld GPS: Garmin Colorado and Vista HCx

My Garmin eTrex Vista HCx, which I've had for less than a year, may be lost forever, so I'm looking for a replacement.

The obvious first choice would be the same thing, an eTrex Vista HCx.

However the new Garmin Colorado, either 300 or 400t, are worth considering.

Some considerations:
--size: Colorado is 2.4"W x 5.5"H x 1.4"D, HCx is 2.2" x 4.2" x 1.2" (the Garmin web site, for some reason isn't consistent in listing W-H-D in the same order)
--weight: Colorado 7.3oz; HCx 5.5oz
--display size: Colorado 240x400 pixels - 3" diagonal; HCx 176x220
--battery life: Colorado 15 hours; HCx 25
--chipset: Colorado- Garmin proprietary; HCx SiRF III
--datacard: Colorado SD, though it appears that 4GB is the limit supported with SDHC; HCx microSD

Some unanswered questions:
--the Colorado has a "Transflective color TFT"; the HCx has 256 level color TFT. What's the functional difference, if any? There is at least one report that the transflective TFT technology is less readable out of doors as well as discussion about the display.
--apparently the Colorado lacks a "night mode," which affects the screen brightness and colors displayed.
--is startup time too long?
--is Trackback feature needed?
--USB 1.1 only?
--no street names with City Nav loaded
--no waypoint averaging
--map borders clutter screen (I've seen this on other units)
--lists don't scroll around, but have a beginning and end
--zooms only to 80 feet

This page lists many perceived deficiencies and this one lists issues.. It's hard to know which of these can be changed/fixed with a firmware update, assuming that Garmin wanted to make the change in the first place.

One concern I haven't yet seen mentioned elsewhere is, with the non-SiRF chipset, can the Coolorado ever take advantage of Ephemeris APGS to reduce time to fix. Perhaps the function or its equivalent is already included?

Friday, February 08, 2008

GrandCentral: Quickrule

GrandCentral has a "quickrule" function that allows one to send all incoming calls to voice mail or forward to a temporary number.

There probably should be some sort of reminder function to make sure someone doesn't set one of these and forget about it.

Garmin City Navigator Thailand NT comments

Garmin has produced street level mapping for Thailand with points of interest such as lodging, restaurants, and transit (for example, small town bus stations)and ships it on a microSD in an SD adapter. I got version 8.

Some initial comments:
  • the serial number isn't evident, if it has one at all
  • when used with a nuvi, it doesn't show 3D maps
  • detail in small towns is pretty good, though there are some misspellings
Points of interest include:
  • border checkpoints
  • Banks and ATMs

Friday, February 01, 2008

GrandCentral Issues: System Status Notification

So I see on the Grand Central Inbox page a notice about a partial outage. I just happened to see this.

It probably would be helpful to have this sort of status message available some other place, perhaps a System Status page.

Also, it would be helpful to have a news feed with significant status messages. Even BART does this. (And so does Skype with their Skype Heartbeat messages.) The phone service demands, pretty much by definition, carrier class facilities and status information is a part of this.

GrandCentral Issues: Inbound Calls Not Working

Now at least one caller said that there was no ring at all when he called my GrandCentral number.

Updated: I can call myself just fine.

Updated: Ok, I asked the guy who called me this morning and did not hear a ring to call again. He did, was announced by the GC robot as "unknown," even though he is in my GC address book, and I picked up. He says he heard nothing--not a ring nor an announcement from the GC robot.

GrandCentral Issues: Click2Call Working?

Ok, now I can't get GrandCentral's Click2Call to originate calls at all:
  • I select "Call."
  • GC responds by displaying numbers from which I can call
  • I choose one
  • GC displays the indication that the call is happening
  • but no ring at the number I've chosen to call from
Updated: Just tried calling and got through ok, so perhaps the function is working again (for me).

GrandCentral Issues: Inbound and Outbound

The story so far is that I've been having problems when using GrandCentral's outbound calling Click2Call feature. The people I'm calling have been complaining that there is a long silence when they answer, leading to their saying, "Hello...hello, etc." and then, occasionally, hanging up.

Since I'm making real work calls with the GC Click2Call service, I stopped using it for most important calls. Yesterday, 31 Jan 08, after one problem in the morning, I used it a couple of times in the afternoon with people likely to be understanding and they reported no problems. So maybe it's a transient problem.

I did have another problem yesterday, which I had forgotten before, when someone called me using my GC number. The GC robot said, "Press 1 to accept," which I did, since it was a coworker, and nothing happened. I pressed "1" several more times, but the my coworker and I never connected. (I called him back and apologized.) This happened again with another person who wasn't so understanding.

I've started telling people to use my GC number and now I'm really hoping I don't have to tell these same people to go back to the old numbers. People don't understand why I list one number for voice and another for SMS anyway (and some people don't know that SMS=text), so the whole thing is confusing for them.

Thursday, January 31, 2008

GrandCentral Click2Call Problems

Apparently my previous problems with people hearing long delays when I originate calls to them using GrandCentral's Click2Call are continuing. The best course seems to be to avoid using it for a while.

GMail and Thunderbird: Switching Between Plain and HTML Composition

Sometimes while in the middle of writing an email note I want to switch from my usual plain text composition mode to rich text/HTML.

Web based GMail allows this easily; Thunderbird doesn't, which is a big pain.

Signing into Plaxo with Verisign OpenID

As part of trying to flog Plaxo to a friend, I went to the Plaxo site, which I hadn't visited for a while to update my Plaxo profile with my GrandCentral info. A couple of days ago I had signed up for an OpenID using Verisign as my OpenID provider.

The Plaxo first-time-OpenID-sign-in process wasn't all that intuitive, requiring first (unannounced as far as I could tell) that my OpenID be "attached" to my Plaxo Id.

The first time I tried associating one with the other, the process flunked. The second time worked, though, as far as I could tell, I did exactly the same steps. If someone wasn't medium sophisticated in this stuff, it's unclear if they would have prevailed.

GrandCentral: Representing One's Phone Numbers

Since GrandCentral doesn't handle incoming SMS/text messages, it's a problem trying to decide how to represent one's phone contact information on, say, a business card or an email signature.

People are conditioned to understand O[ffice], W[ork], C[ell], and (maybe) M[obile] as prefixes for phone numbers on cards and email signatures.

I suppose one could use H[ome], but it's so uncommon a card or a sig[nature] that it doesn't make real sense to include it with the others. The common usuage would be to spell it out in a personal note or, perhaps, trade in a vCard.

If I were to use GC, for GrandCentral or U[nified], it would just cause confusion.

And dividing between V[oice] and T[ext] and labeling as such doesn't seem practical (and exposes a changeable cell/mobile number, too).