3 hours of early morning fiber jumper cleanup at SVL without knocking the network off the air...

#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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

Banksy http://ping.fm/x3R6Q

Nice howto twitter effectively + resources at http://ping.fm/KKIAq

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

Lenovo Thinkpad disk encryption is poorly explained on the Lenovo website

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.

: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

look at hand held OTDR (cheap)

Need to look into utility of remote wipe

Bye Sally. You were a great dog...

why does the brand new HP Officejet J6450 that's attached wired Ethernet always come up offline?

trying Google Sites for work planning.

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!

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)

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?

experimenting with MagicJack

ok now pinging status with Ping.fm. If I could just get the dumb fiber tested...

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)

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.

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.

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

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?

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)

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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).

GrandCentral Experience, Chapter 1

So, I've been using Google's Grand Central phone service for a week or so for real work and I think this as good a place as any to comment on the ongoing experience, especially problems. There's a Grand Central Help Group, but formal support doesn't seem to be provided.

Setting up wasn't too awful since I had recently scrubbed my contacts as part of an iPhone conversion, using Yahoo's address book as my contacts database. One reason for this was to keep my contacts from being associated with any specific PC.

Some day to day operational problems came up such as lack of support for extensions, no Skype integration (in favor of Gizmo, and no international outbound call support.

And today, when I make outbound calls using Grand Central's Click2Call feature, people complain that they don't hear anything for a couple of seconds after they pick up the phone. This has happened for 3 callers, so far, leading one to hang up.

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

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• 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.

WSJ on Microsoft Vista Requirements

• Memory: Microsoft suggests 512 megabytes of memory, or RAM, for stripped-down Vista, and it will probably recommend one gigabyte of memory for full Vista. But based on experience with the company's guidelines, I strongly suggest doubling those amounts. Even on a cheap machine, I'd get one gigabyte of memory, and if you want to run Vista with all its features, I suggest two gigabytes.

• Video: Stripped-down Vista can run on any graphics hardware that can support what's called SVGA, or a resolution of 800 by 600. The hardware should also support a Microsoft technology called DirectX 9. This includes many integrated graphics systems, which do away with a separate video card in favor of graphics chips bolted to the mother board.

Full Vista will be best with a separate, or "discrete," graphics card that has at least 128 megabytes of dedicated video memory. These cards also need support for DirectX 9. In addition, however, they must also support Microsoft software called "WDDM" and "Pixel Shader 2." If your eyes are rolling right now, don't fret. Microsoft officials say nearly all discrete graphics cards on the market today meet these specs, as will the latest integrated graphics systems, such as Intel chip sets labeled 945 or higher.

• Processor: For stripped-down Vista, a processor running at 800 megahertz or faster should be sufficient, according to Microsoft. For full Vista, the speed rises to one gigahertz. I'd edge higher if your budget allows, but you don't need the fastest processor.

• Hard disk: Disk storage is already copious enough for Vista, and buying large amounts is cheap. For stripped-down Vista, I'd go for at least 60 gigabytes of hard-disk space. For full Vista, I'd boost that to 160 gigabytes, to accommodate lots of music and video.
--Mossberg, 13 Apr 06

Meebo Icons

If you have a picture that you’ve created that’s 96×96 pixels, and you would like it to potentially be one of the default buddy icons in meebo, send it to buddyicon@meebo.com.

Hong Kong Automated Passenger Clearance

Since 16 December 2004, the Immigration Department has introduced the automated passenger clearance system (e-channels) to members of the public. Currently, Hong Kong permanent residents (except those under the age of 11) or Hong Kong residents holding Document of Identity for Visa Purposes (DI) can use their smart identity cards to perform self-service immigration clearance. Since 12 September 2006, e-Channel service has been extended to people who have the right to land or are on unconditional stay in Hong Kong, and non-permanent residents who have been issued with a notification label. Meanwhile, please note that Hong Kong residents must bring along with them their valid travel documents when travelling.

To enter the e-channel is simple. People just have to insert their smart identity cards with the side bearing the arrow and chip into the card reader. The system will take a while to perform mutual authentication with the smart identity card key. People can enter the e-channel when the gate doors open. After entering the e-channel, people just need to place their thumbs flat on the centre of scanners. After fingerprint verification they can leave the e-channel.