Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

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It just goes to show what happens if you read Consumer Reports and “Car and Driver”:http://www.caranddriver.com/roadtests/11724/2007-mazdaspeed-3.html and try to find a car that both the practical folks at CR like and the sporty folks at C&D like. The only crossovers are the BMW 328i and the Mazdaspeed 3. I have never even thought about buying…

The iphone hackers have this great over the air installer called Installer.app or the Apptapp installer. I’m always looking for new iPhone apps, the latest and greatest apepars on http://modmyifone.com/installer.xml, type that into the Sources/Edit/Add screen…

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Seattle used to be pretty baron of great places to eat, but now the number of new trendy restaurants is getting hard to keep track of. Beside “Lark”:http://www.larkseattle.com/ which just won Best Chef in the Northwest from James Beard, there is also “Purple”:http://www.thepurplecafe.com/ in downtown which has great cheeses and lunches. Last night, thanks to…

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Got this game on a whim. It is actually pretty fun and even somewhat realistic. There are of course lots of sites that cover it and the strategies. The 2004 version as http://www.morrisongames.com/ explains had lots of rules changes. The main thing though is to figure out what strategies work. There are lots of strategies…

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After reading reviews from “gpsreview.net”:http://gpsreview.net, I finally caved and got an el cheapo $300 GPS for our old Volvo. It cost about $3000 for the DVD Navigation unit in new cars, so its interesting to see how good the add-on products are. I have to say I’m amazed. The thing really is not much a…

One of the truly cool things about iPhone applications (assuming you have a jailbroken iPhone or iPod Touch) is that the user community is amazing. Most folks now use Apptapp which downloads applications over the internet automatically for you. You get Apptapp pretty much automatically if you use “jailbreakme.com”:http://jailbreakme.com for 1.1.1 firmware. They include a…

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“Creativetechs.com”:http://www.creativetechs.com/tips/quicktips_43.html helps when you accidentally type the same PID into two computers. Basically, you have to delete the files: /Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Office/ – OfficePID (normally an invisible file) Users/[Username]/Library/Preferences/Microsoft – Carbon Registration Database – Office Registration Cache – Microsoft Office Settings Then Mac Office acts like it has been reinstalled and you can reenter the…

The rumor is that in January (Christmas just a month late) at Mac Expo, we’ll see the new “ultra-portable”:http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/11/12/ultra_portable_apple_notebook_to_splash_down_at_macworld_expo.html that I’m already drooling over. The big give is that it won’t have an optical drive. This used to be a big deal for me when I thought I would watch lots of DVDs on airplanes,…

Well, the iPod Touch is much like the iPhone but there are compatibility issues. The best site that covers this seems to be “ipodtouchfans.com”:http://ipodtouchfans.com. The main thing is that there are now repositories all over the web that let the Installer.app put things on the iPod touch and the “list”:http://www.ipodtouchfans.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8180. Overall “ipodtouchfans”:http://www.ipodtouchfans.com/wiki/index.php?title=IPod_touch_Application_Compatibility has a great…

Chinese input is not officially supported yet in any release of software for the iPhone or the iPod Touch, here is how to get a bootleg version to work for the latest jailbroken and unlocked iPhone (currently 1.1.1). Thanks to the posts at “iphone.org.hk”:http://www.iphone.org.hk/cgi-bin/ch/topic_show.cgi?id=2962&h=1&bpg=1&age=0 for explaining the 1.1.2 trick and also to “iphone.org.hk”:http://iphone.org.hk for hosting…

OK, to get the terms straight. Jailbreak means that you can access the whole files system on the iPod Touch or iPhone. This comes from the fact that what actually happens is that you are “chroot jail” in Unix terms. That means that the root, or the top of the file system also called, “/”…

Tong Family Blog: Any Video or Audio Format Conversion We haven’t used our Sony SR-100 in quite a while. It is a hard disk camcorder that records standard definition into MPG (that is MPEG-2 format files). It is actually quite hard to crack this format, so if you have bought Sony Vegas Movie Studio then…

Someone asked me, what if you want to just send a fax these days. Well, like most things, the question is complicated. There are the really low end and ugly thermal fax machines, but with all-in-one printers just $180, it is not clear why you’d want one. So the house that has everything really needs…

Someone was asking me what they could do about a car that doesn’t have a $3,000 GPS in it and what if they don’t want to buy a car just to get one. Well, TomTom, Garmin and Magellan are in a fight to the death to offer just such a portable unit. They plug into…

Playing different video formats on the Mac is a real pain. “Animemusicvideos.org”:http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/playback/playosx.html has a nie list of, if I need to play a format, here is what I need to do with the short answer that beside Quicktime, the main thing you need is VLC: | Format | Player Needed | | MP4 | VLC…

Many sites are now tuning for the iPhone and also TUAW does a good list of free “downloads”:http://www.tuaw.com/2007/11/14/itunes-free-wednesday/ from iTunes. Many are from foreign countries, so what you have to do is to logon and then you have to buy a gift card and enter an address from that country. Unfortunately, these downloads are keyed…

Alex and Calvin are both learning to program. Here are some geat modern ways (as opposed to Basic that I learned): * “Alice”:http://alice.org. This is a 3D programming environment that is used to put people into the graphical world. EA is underwriting the development and will use Sims 2 characters for instance will be used…

Well, “1.1.2”:http://www.t3.co.uk/news/247/communications/mobile_phone/iphone-firmware-update-2 is out and that means hacking begins, the main feature for all us Chinese users is that it “finally” has Chinese input. Ryan tells me it is buggy though, so beware. In any case, 1.1.2 appears mainly to be a language release and of course it closes off the TIFF exploit used to…