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Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

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  • Website Decoder Ring

    Folks have been asking us about all the weblogs we have running around. Here’s a decoder ring of all the geeks around here: “Geekfishing”:http://Geekfishing.net. Our blog for all the folks at “Ignition”:http://ignitionpartners.com. Maintained by “Rich Tong”:https://richtong.org. The chief geek maintainer of sites. Here are the folks on our Telecom team: * “Adrian Smith”:http://smithstuff.net. My colleague…

  • Perfect Gadgets

    I never thought I’d say it, but perfection is getting pretty close. I got a whole slew of gadgets over the last week even as I suffered though a week in NYC. I’ve never had such a list of highly recommended products before. This is for “Jeff Merriman-Cohen”:http://www.merrimancapital.com/ and “Jon”:http://ignitionpartners.com/about/jon_a.asp who asked mre for the…

  • Connie helps cure cervical cancer

    Connie’s group is finding that there is a vaccine that can help prevent Cervical Cancer. They found a protein that assembles itself into viral-like particles that targets the virus that causes the cancer. Technology News: Health : Good Results on Cervical Cancer Vaccine. A good technical explanation. “MSNBC has Connie on TV”:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6463252/. Its a nice…

  • Learning Chinese

    A funny category, but it is incredibly hard to find PCsoftware to learn Chinese. Here are some links: * Speaking Chinese – Download Speaking Chinese from Education category. This is a $35 shareware package. * “Chinese Software Superstore”:http://chinesesoftware.com. Well it certainly has the right URL.

  • Seattle Busview

    Busview Project Overview. An amazing application, it takes the real time location information from Seattle Buses, you can launch this Java application and actually see where the buses are and pick them up. Another example of how key technologies like location and then wireless are going to make everything easier. Also another hint how companies…

  • Scott English asks…

    Hearst Corporate Site. Had a great meeting with Scott English who I got ot meet at “Alan Patricof’s”:http://apax.com Digital Media conference. We talked quite a bit about the future of audio and video. Some interesting sites to look at are: * “Azureus”:http://azureus.com. An incredibly geeky but powerful client for Bit Torrent. * “ISOHunt”:http://isohunt.com. IMHO, the…

  • Martin Puris asks..

    Had a chance to meet with “Martin Puris”:http://ntmnet.com today. He’s a god amongst advertising gods having run Ammirati Puris before selling to Interpublic. You might know the Ultimate Driving Machine or the original Volkswagon ads. Anyway, it was terrific to meet him and have him ask questions about marketing particularly blog style. BTW, Martin, here…

  • MT 3.1 and IE 6,0 Comment Bug

    Deep Green Crystals: MT 3.1 and IE comment work-around. There’s a pretty terrible bug with IE 6.0 and this blog running MT 3.1. Basically, it doesn’t like the way cookies are being used. In order to fix, either flip to “Firefox”:http://firefox.com or you need to change the IE 6.0 default configuration so that in Tools/Internet…

  • Handtops

    OQO, FlipStart, Sony U50, FlyBook, Tiqit, Antelope. Here’s a new class of device called a handtop. These are smaller than notebooks, but bigger than PDAs. Most run full Windows via a Transmeta chipset. Our buddies at “Azure”:http://azurecap.com have funded “OQO”:http://oqo.com and I’ve ordered one to try it. In looking at the device though, I’m not…

  • When will nForce4 Motherboards arrive

    Tom’s Hardware Guide Motherboards & RAM: NVIDIA Rushes Into PCI Express With nForce4 – SLI To Come!. A good early review of the new nForce4s. It is a tweak of the NForce3 that uses PCI Express for video cards. Actually, given that today’s graphics card don’t even push AGP at 8x, its not clear why,…

  • Shackleton Quote Is Not

    Advert Proof Wanted. _I’m so depressed, it turns out that no one can find the actual source of the ad that Ernest Shackleton is said to have submitted to the London Times in 1913 for the Endurance. May have been for the Nimrod or it could be urgan legend, in any case, the quote is…

  • Sony VAIO T140P/L Review

    Sony VAIO T140P/L (ExactChoice Product Profile and Review of Features). Well the T140P/L is finally in stock. About $1800 for the 40GB/512MB model. Runs XP Home. Its about “Pricegrabber”:http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=4762539 shows that it is $1870 from “Page Computer”:http://www.pagecomputers.com/cgi-bin/page/B1481334.html, so it’s not expensive.

  • Insider scoop on PCs

    AnandTech in Taiwan. A great insider scoop on what is up in Taiwan. The big news is that PCI Express ain’t selling well. The 915 boards are stacking up like cordwood. Shows once again that even with a brand like Intel, you can’t just sell stuff that ain’t faster. Interesting to see that in terms…

  • DFI LanPartyUT 855GME-MGF

    Tom’s Pentium-M desktop motherboard. The latest strange inversion in the Intel product line. The mobile processor Pentium M 73x (codenamed Dothan) is actually faster and uses less power than its erstwhile “big brother” desktop chips Pentium 74x and 75x (codenamed Prescott). More than a little embarassing to Intel, the Pentium M is really an evolution…

  • ebay hacks and tools

    !{float: left; margin-right: 10px;}http://jillofalltrades.homestead.com/files/ebay_store_test_1.gif!:http://stores.ebay.com/Auction-Profit-Education-Consulting This is a huge sub-economy. There are many insights about this and many, many sites. Ebay itself is complex. Janelle is really great and a total expert. Some of her more interesting points and connections to great ebay tools are: * Auctionbites – Free news and resources for online auction users.…

  • Unlocked Nokia 6620s

    The best place to get Nokia 6620s that are “unlocked” so that you can put it anywhere. Actually, they are amazingly cheap given they are unlocked. We bought three phones for $99 each but had to sign up for a three year contract. If you check out “ebay”:http://attr-search.ebay.com/6620_Phones-Only_Nokia-AT-T-Wireless-Unlocked_W0QQa10244ZQ2d24QQa25662Z25624QQa25664Z25636QQa35Z25644QQalistZa25664Q2ca25662Q2ca35Q2ca10244Q2ca3801QQcatrefZC6QQcoactionZcompareQQcoentrypageZsearchQQcopagenumZ1QQfromZR2QQgcsZ1440QQpfZShowQ20ItemsQQpf_queryZ6620QQpfidZ1720QQsacategoryZQ2d100QQsbrftogZ1QQsocolumnlayoutZ3QQsocomparecolumnlayoutZ1QQsofocusZpfQQsorecordsperpageZ50QQsosortorderZ2QQsosortpropertyZ2QQsotrZ2 you can find dozens for about $250.…

  • Nokia Stereo Headset HDS-3

    Nokia Stereo Headset HDS-3 For 6600/7200 series Phone. Nokia for instance needs special headset attachments. So you need to buy this for $15 and then if you have fancy earphones like this, you get “Adrian”:http://smithstuff.net to cut it off and put a 2.5mm connector on it.

  • Nokia 6620

    Russell Beattie Notebook – My Shiny New Nokia 6620!. We got three of these and this is a great review by Russell Beattie. Am still charging it and am anxious to test the screen. The main bummer is that they have some funky headset attachment so you can’t plug in any headphones and the MMC…

  • NEC ND-3500A DVD Recorder

    AnandTech DVD Review and “Tom’s Hardware”:http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20041102/. _A new champion for DVD drives_ _From Anandtech_. From our results, we can see that the Pioneer DVR-108D, LG GSA-4160B, and NEC’s ND-3500A came out on top with their ability to burn any type of media almost flawlessly as well as burn 2.4X dual layer media at 4.0X speeds…

  • Latest on LAME

    Hydrogenaudio Forums -> MP3 – General, It’s hard to find the latest data on what version of LAME (Lame isn’t an MPEG-3 Encoder). But, Hydrogenaudio seems to have it. Basically, today the version to use is Lame 3.90.3 which is a little older than the current 3.96, but seems to work better. It’s also hard…

  • Headphone Buying Guide

    HeadRoom | Portable Listening. The folks at Headroom do such an outstanding job doing recommendations for headphones and portable equipment. The best recommendations are the Etymotic headphones. I’ve gotten a bunch for folks. They are expensive, but boy do they sound amazing. The ER-6P is $99 and is very good. If you are splurging, the…

  • BlogIt for Firefox

    JustBlogIt with a simple right-click.. Eureka, I love Firefox, but one announying thing is that tools like QuickPost for MovableType don’t work well with it. In particular, the popup comes up behind the main windows instead of in front. This fixes that (I hope). Also SharpMT doesn’t seem to get along with my version of…

  • Buying List

    Ok, so many things to look at right now…here’s a list of what we’re in the market for right now: * “iPod”:http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_attrib.php/page_id=161. Probably the 4G 20GB version. No VC can really invest in consumer products without having an ipod. They are their own universe right now. Man these these things *are* expensive. About 50% more…

  • Dream Laptop nearly here

    Page Computer — T140P/L NB PM1100 512MB 40GB CDRW/DVD 10.6IN WXPP. My dream laptop is nearly here. It is the low-end Sony VGN-T140P/L, cost if $1905 and it is backordered. Can’t wait to get it.

  • Markdown

    Daring Fireball: Markdown. We’ve been using Textile 2 for a while as the markup languages for all of our blogs. I see now that using Markdown, so it is an interesting language to try. Textile is great and powerful, but hard to teach folks the more sophisticated stuff. BTW, this is another amazing script that…

  • Commenters must register

    Because tongfamily.com is literally beseiged with spammers (even with MT Blacklist, I get probably 50 spam comments a day), I’m turning on the registration required. In order to comment you’ll need a free “Typekey”:http://typekey.com registration in order to logon. Sorry about this, but I’m wasting too much time editing out spam. We will convert the…

  • Final Move from MT 2.661 to MT3

    Learning Movable Type: TypeKey Authentication for Comments. I thought I was done, but it turns out there is a ton of work to be done. MT 2.661 blogs are *not* automatically converted to MT3.0. There is a boatload of work to do as covered in Elise.com and also in “Anzi”:http://www.anzidesign.com/archives/000443.html You can see this because…

  • Final Fix for Blackberry 7230, Windows XP SP2 and Outlook 2003

    Well its taken forever to figure out how to fix the various problems. There are lots of postings. I basically got the install problem to work with XP SP2, but I’ve been unable to synchronize because when I go to the Desktop Manager and choose Intellisync/Configure PIM/Address Book/Choose/Browse, I don’t get an folder enumerated. Also,…

  • Quantum String Costume

    Calvin wants to be a quantum string for Halloween (I know, the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree). So we need a picture of a quantum string for the front of his sweatshirt (black of course) and the equations on the back. Here are the places to look for photos of strings: * “Cosmic…

  • Portable Speakers

    Need one of these portable speakers for presentations. Got an el cheapo Radio Shack thing for $40, but it is incredibly heavy and you have to bring two speakers. That’s because it uses 4C batteries each and is very bulky. The reviews for portable speakers absolutely stink from the mainstream sites, but “Ipod lounge”:http://www.ipodlounge.com/reviews_more.php?id=5016_0_6_0_C seems…