i am extremely tired but I felt like I needed to do this post today. especially since it’s September 11… You know I didn’t notice anyone make a deal out of today. This day seven years ago there were people consumed with evil that attacked our great nation of America. These men are ruthless and hate the concept of democracy and western culture. But instead of talking about the demonic forces behind this disaster I think we need to recall this day for the lose that we all have faced. All of the families that lost loved ones… We are deeply sorry for your lost and even though it doesn’t seem fair, God has got it all in control. He has a plan and sometimes we may not understand it all, but He is far wiser than we will ever be. I am praying for you all and I realize the lose will never disappear. This post is in rememberance of all of you…
Tomorrow’s Apple Predictions!
•September 8, 2008 • 1 CommentFor those that don’t know, there is going to be a big Apple announcement tomorrow! Steve Jobs was quoted last month in saying something on the lines as “we’re looking forward to the new products we will be shipping in the coming September”. That was paraphrased but Apple did state they had some interesting new products to introduce! Well all the invites that were emailed out for the announcement had a picture of a guy with his iPod. So hopefully that isn’t a hint on some newer iPods. Lets get to something different APPLE! lol but another reason for suggesting newer iPods was a leak that occured on Digg a couple of months ago. The rumor is that the Nano will be more Zune like! What are you thinking APPLE, lol no but the screen is going to have a widescreen aspect ratio, unlike its present fatty self. Also they are talking about a pretty decent price cut in all of the iPods because Apple doesn’t want this to interfer with their iPhone sells. The final thing that we all seem to be excepting is an update to iTunes! So we’ll be seeing iTunes 8.0 with some pretty interesting new features. Keep posted to http://apple.com tomorrow, throughout the whole day and I’ll be twittering about it tomorrow probably! lol Also if you want to see some pictures or hear Kevin Rose with the scoop yourself check out http://gizmodo.com/5040823/kevin-rose-ipod-rumors-price-cut-new-itunes-80-features-and-tall-rounded-nano.
콩 Player Aka Kong
•September 6, 2008 • Leave a CommentFor those of you that do not have the Korean language downloaded on either your Linux machine, your Macintosh, or Windows PC, I will translate the first word in the title line. In English you pronounce it as Kong, which means ball in English. This is a very interesting little application that I am quite fond of. Kong was a determining factor in me buying an Windows PC, along with some other proprietary software. This is a little application that can sit in your start bar in Windows and it streams different KBS stations live. The KBS is the oldest and one of the most successful content creators in Korea. They first started with radio back in the day and have branched out within the realms of television etc. Anyways I enjoy listening to their radio stations quite often. I will warn you it is quite difficult in registering for a login name to listen to their content. There is a pretty long wait period, but of course if you reside in Korea, the process is faster. They also require a lot of personal information for some reason… I’ve talked with several Korean friends of mine and it is just a way for them to verify you. A lot of foreign services or website require some kind of this information. Anyways check it out at http://world.kbs.co.kr/english/radio/howlisten/kongpod.htm. This is a must have app for my Vista Machine.
HP Slimline PC
•September 6, 2008 • 1 Commentwell guys some of you might of seen my twitter posts. I recently bought a new computer. Surprisingly it was not a Mac computer and no I haven’t been smoking something! lol I have been really impressed with this small PC since it was launched a while back. It is the s3500t model. Well first look without even turning it on I love the size and the case. The case is just big enough to where I can change out something if something were to go wrong with it. the computer is running very smoothly and I am loving the Vista Experience. I mean it’s nothing that would make me ditch all of my Macintosh software and my Macbook but it is quite enjoyable. I like having the comforts of a Windows machine and since SP1’s release several months ago I’ve heard nothing but great responses about Vista. Well this post is probably being read by a geek or at least someone that likes to know different kinds of specs. My Slimline HP is a Core2Duo processor ranging at 2.7gigahertz. 3 gigabytes of RAM, a 512 Video card, and a 500 gig hard drive. The thing I hated the most about when I first turned on the little computer was all the crap that HP puts on their machines. It was loaded with bloatware. The very first thing I did was uninstall everything HP placed on there. If I had had a Vista Home Premium install disk I would of reformatted it completely. Though that is on my list as a future purchase. Anyways these are great computers and I will continue to keep everyone posted on my experience. Check it out at http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/series_can.do?storeName=computer_store&landing=desktops&a1=Category&v1=Versatile%20performance.
RF Chips?!
•August 31, 2008 • 1 CommentI’ve been thinking lately about how we use credit cards, gift cards, and ID cards in the US. It seems to me that every way to enter in the information from these cards are to swip them. Well hasn’t anyone ever noticed that when a credit card gets swiped a lot and pulled out from the wallet frequently it gets worn quite easily? This makes me wonder how come we haven’t adopted RF chips inside our ID cards, Credit cards etc. When I was in China and Hong Kong we had to get an Octopus Card or a Token to ride the subway in China. Anyways the distinct feature with this Octopus Card or Token was that they had RF chips inside them. This allow me to scan my card by just touching a little plate and it would deduct the amount from my account. The same would go for this Token I used in China. Since the Octopus Card was RF I didn’t even need to take it out of my wallet. I could literally place my wallet to the plate and it would scan my card. So what I did was I got a little Octopus Card holder with a drink I bought and I just kept it inside that, and then inside my wallet. This was very convenient and my card stayed in great shape. The Token on the other hand I had to take out of my pocket but that was because it was a coin I had to put to the plate. How come we haven’t adopted this technology to our culture? The only thing I’ve seen similar to this is the paypass readers and I’ve only seen a few of them since it’s launch. I don’t know, what do you all think about this techonology’s future? Is it something you’d like to see or does it not matter to you?
Cloud Backup
•August 26, 2008 • 2 Commentshey guys! I know it’s been a little while since I last posted but I have an interesting little service to talk about today. This cloud service pertains to backing up data. If you are using a computer, you probably realize how easy it is to lose information. Whether you accidently deleted a file, your hard drive crashed, or your whole computer became infected by a virus. It is essential that you fequently backup all of your important data, ie photos, videos, music, documents. There is a radio broadcaster named Leo Laporte that I listen to almost daily that says if you don’t have two backups of something, then you really have no backups. Actually it is his friend Alex Lindsay that says this, but he quotes his friend every once in a while. Anyways it is good to have a local backup, like a hard drive or burning CDs or DVDs. But an even better backup solution is cloud backup.
The term Cloud Backup is referring to uploading your data to a site like Carbonite, Mozy, or S3. I would actually like to talk about the last one Amazon’s S3 service. All three of them do the same thing, which allows you to backup your information somewhere other than your home. Offsite backup is important because what if by chance your house were to burn down. Perhaps a flood washes away all of your possessions. This is why the saying have two backups if you really want to have it is true.
Well I’ve been using Amazon’s S3 service for almost a week now and I am completely loving it. You pay a one time fee of 20 dollars USD and you can have as many computers as you would like backup to this service. The amount of space is ulitmately unlimited, the only thing is you pay about 10 cent a gigabyte to store the data. Thats actually very impressive. So my Macbook contains about 25 gigabytes of personal files and I am spending about $2.50 to gaurantee my data is safe. Little fees come up here and there but I think it is safe to say that the first month of backing up all of your info might cost you 10-15 dollars USD and then after that it probably won’t cost to much.
One reason why I went with Amazon is because I like the pay as you go model. It’s convenient and you don’t need to put down any large sum of money upfront. Another reason that is good enough for me is that it is maintain by Amazon. Well I love Amazon and I shop on their site often. The final reason I went with Amazon’s S3 service over Carbonite or Mozy is that it’s cross platform and I don’t mean just Mac and Windows. Amazon’s S3 is Mac, Linux, and Windows compatible. Now I don’t operate too much in Linux but I do have a mixed environment of one Macbook and a soon to be HP Slimline desktop. So this will come in handy when I am trying to back up all of my information in one location. I do dabble a little bit in Linux, so at least I have the option if I need it.
Well thats my little synopsis on Amazon’s S3 service and I hope you enjoy it as much as I am. You can find more information at http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=16427261. Later
Unlocked Nokia N95
•August 17, 2008 • Leave a Commenthey everyone! Yes i know I haven’t been writing as much lately but I recently got a new phone and I want to talk about it! Tigerdirect recently had a sell about a month ago and I purchased an unlocked Nokia N95. This is the phone I wanted to buy in China but it was selling for around 600-700 USD there! Well I didn’t buy it there and I’m actually glad I didn’t because I got it for a lot less than that. I mean a lot less! Anyways this is an unlocked GSM phone and I can take it any GSM carrier in the States. Not only that but it supports the Verizon networks and Sprint networks. As some of you know I recently went to Hong Kong and China. Well my phone at the time was a Sonny Ericcson W710i. It was a locked phone with the Suncom network. I could not switch SIM cards over there and buy a prepaid card because of this. So next time I fly to China I can now use my cell phone! The N95 I think is a major iPhone killer. It is a geeky kind of phone though and I find only heavy computer users adapting to this phone. It’s written with a Symbian OS S60 and it supports JAVA! It has built in WIFI, stereo bluetooth, a headphone jack, a 5 megapixel camera with a flash. The music player on here is really nice and it offers a slot for a microSD slot. So I had a 4 gig card lying around and I popped it in! So far the only negative about this phone is it does not support Asian languages… and a lot of the tags in my mp3’s are in either Chinese or Korean… So it comes up as boxes instead of Korean or Chinese. I am hoping though since the Symbian OS is going to be released as open source in the near future someone will develop a plugin for asian language support. Anyways check out the phone at http://www.nokiausa.com/link?cid=PLAIN_TEXT_430087. Oh by the way, I wouldn’t buy it from Nokia, I found it for about $150 less through Tigerdirect. Enjoy! This is definitely the iPhone killer for geeks!
Oh and before I forget I downloaded a plugin for my N95 and I can now sync it with my iCal and Addressbook on the mac! I can also mount it as a drive and copy my music too! I’m very impressed with this phone! Nothing but high praises!
CantoPop CDs
•July 21, 2008 • 1 Commenthey fellow bloggers and blog readers!! today I am doing another post on my previous experience in Hong Kong. Today I’d like to talk about some Cantopop CDs that I purchased over there. They were pretty reasonable for the price. I think they both were close to $100 HKD which seems a lot but is only about $12 USD. Plus both of the CDs came with DVDs of the music videos done by the artists. Well the first Artist that I found is Vincy. Here name in Chinese is which is traditional script (aka Cantonese). I thought the CD overall was actually really good. And the music videos were interesting. She’s got a beautiful voice and the beat is pretty catchy for most of the tracks on this CD. The album name is 多想認識你, if any of you are interested in purchasing her CD. This is her latest album.
The other person I’d like to give a plug for is Jason Chan or 陳 柏宇 for Cantonese. The title of his album is Change. He still had a pretty good album but I didn’t like all of the songs at first. But after listening to them for a little bit I have changed my mind. The DVD that came for his CD includes a music video for his more popular track, “I Miss You”. Also it comes with some other songs that are performed live and it seems to show some Christmas songs 😛 Anyways these Chinese artists to my knowledge are singing in Cantonese, so if you want Mandopop I don’t think this would do you any good. But I think their both pretty good artists and from what the Chinese peeps I asked in the Music store said, they’ve been around for a while. Oh and to give props to the Media store in Northern Hong Kong, the dudettes that worked in there were very knowledgeable and their English was pretty decent. Anyways the shop is Yat Sing Music Center and if anyone is around it in Sheng Shui, they should check it out. We were there for a bit as we were headed to the Chinese border, Shenzhen.
Hong Kong Lights
•July 17, 2008 • 1 Commentok well the next cool little fact I would like to share about Hong Kong was the light show that occured every night around 7pm or 8pm. I’m not sure the exact time, because I forgot. lol If you go downtown Hong Kong then at the bay you can see a magnificient lightshow. The buildings surrounding the bay participate in this show. All the buildings light up and do mini lightshows. I really couldn’t believe how these buildings were able to pull it off. The lights went all the way up the buildings. I uploaded some pictures on Flickr of this interesting event. check it out at http://flickr.com/photos/brandonnc They mostly are all at the beginning of the page.
China/Hong Kong Info #1
•July 11, 2008 • 1 Commentok well everyone yes I didn’t have internet in Hong Kong until the last couple of days… It was very aggrivating. But I’m back here in the States and I’ve decided since I didn’t get to blog during my trip I’m going to be releasing little facts about my trip on and off throughout the next week or two. If you would like to see some of the pictures check them out on my Flickr page, my account name is brandonnc. Anyways the first little thing I’d like to share is breakfast in Hong Kong! lol well It’s an Asian country so they do have a lot of noodles and rice for breakfast traditionally but when we were there it was pretty similiar to the States except to key breakfast items! The French toast is nothing like in the States. It’s two slices of bread with peanut butter in between them and then deep fried! lol I did try some and it was pretty good but I didn’t want to eat a lot of it. The second breakfast item that is nothing like the States is the sausage! Dudes and dudettes all a sausage is in Hong Kong is a hot dog deep fried! And if you have seen a fried hot dog they do not look appealing. But overall food is extremely cheap over there if your coming from the States. You could pretty much get enough food to be well over for under $5. So that concludes random Chinese fact number one! See you tomorrow! 🙂
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