Tong Family (richtong.org sync)

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…

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…

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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…

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…

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.…

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…

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…

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…