Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

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If you get to Canada often then there are two options: # If you have AT&T then get the “AT&T Canada plan”:http://www.wireless.att.com/learn/international/roaming/affordable-world-packages.jsp#4, they have a $4/month plan where roaming in Canada is $0.59 per minute and any calls from the US to Canada are $0.19/minute while and text messages to…

Someone was asking me about cars and how to manage them. Well, if you live in Seattle, you can actually rent a car for $10/hour. it is something called “Flexcar”:http://www.flexcar.com. You call a phone number or logon to the web, you reserve a car in any of most garages in…

Yikes, the Windows Student Edition was just cheaper, but “Anandtech”:http://anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=3215&p=2 points out that this Mac version has a $130 student edition *without* Exchange support while the $350 version has Exchange support. I now own two copies of an absolutely useless Student Edition as a result. Arrgggh! There is an even…

If you’ve got videos say in MPEG2/DVD format and want to convert into smaller H.264 format, then the Mac choices are pretty different from PC. Essentially, you need four tools: # “Handbrake”:http://trac.handbrake.fr to take it from a DVD and convert it into a computer quality (e.g,. high quality .AVI or…

“Anandtech”:http://anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=3226&p=23 has done the first full Macbook Air review that compares the SSD performance. As an aside folks are asking me how the new SSD is on the MacBook Air. First, the system is completely quiet. Second, for normal use, like Internet browsing and reading email, it feels just as…

Now that we know “comcast”:http://www.macworld.com/article/132101/2008/02/netneutrality2.html is shutting down traffic, its a good time to safeguard your privacy and make sure that you are in good shape with all those prying eyes. The first thing is to encrypt as much as you can. The second use a VPN or encrypted tunnel…

“Gamespot”:http://www.gamespot.com/games.html?type=games&platform=42&tag=header;logo has a good list of Macintosh games. With all the Macs, the kids are asking, what games can I play. Interestingly, they have Age of Empires III, Need for Speed Carbon and Prey all available on the Mac and they get good reviews from “Macworld”:http://macworld.com Also there is a…