Focuses on Education, Business, Law and Other Topics Relevant to Chinese Americans
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On the day that Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat went to the Republicans, the White House launched its new The White House iPhone app. However, parents beware. The White House is not safe for children because it may display “infrequent/mild realistic violence” and “infrequent/mild alcohol, tobacco or drug use or references.”
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The California Department of Transportation offers a fast-loading page for looking up road conditions. If you plan on making a ski run to Lake Tahoe this winter, you could select “Add to Home Screen” to create a button for that page on your iPhone. For example, I-80, which runs from San Francisco to Lake Tahoe, currently shows the following alerts:
This highway information is the latest reported as of Sunday, December 13, 2009 at 23:35 .
I 80
[IN THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA]
A HIGH WIND ADVISORY IS IN EFFECT AT THE SAN FRANCISCO-OAKLAND BAY BRIDGE
/IN SAN FRANCISCO/ (SAN FRANCISCO,ALAMEDA CO) - TRAVEL IS NOT RECOMMENDED
FOR CAMPERS, TRAILERS OR PERMIT LOADS
[IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA & THE SIERRA NEVADA]
**FOR EASTBOUND TRAFFIC:
CHAINS ARE REQUIRED ON ALL VEHICLES EXCEPT 4-WHEEL-DRIVE VEHICLES WITH SNOW
TIRES ON ALL 4 WHEELS FROM 1 MI EAST OF BAXTER (PLACER CO) TO THE
DONNER LAKE INTERCHANGE (NEVADA CO)
EASTBOUND TRUCKS ARE BEING SCREENED AT APPLEGATE (PLACER CO) - DRIVERS MUST
HAVE MINIMUM CHAINS IN THEIR POSSESSION IN ORDER TO PROCEED - PERMIT LOADS ARE
PROHIBITED
**FOR WESTBOUND TRAFFIC:
CHAINS ARE REQUIRED ON ALL VEHICLES EXCEPT 4-WHEEL-DRIVE VEHICLES WITH SNOW
TIRES ON ALL 4 WHEELS FROM TO THE DONNER LAKE INTERCHANGE (NEVADA CO) WHITMORE
(PLACER CO)
WESTBOUND TRUCKS ARE BEING SCREENED 5 MI WEST OF RENO (WASHOE CO) - DRIVERS
MUST HAVE MINIMUM CHAINS IN THEIR POSSESSION IN ORDER TO PROCEED - PERMIT LOADS
ARE PROHIBITED
Unfortunately, after you search for a particular highway, the website displays the results without changing the URL. So, how can you bookmark a particular highway?
http://www.dot.ca.gov/cgi-bin/roadscell.cgi?roadnumber=80,280,680,101,580,680
This covers all the major routes from the San Francisco Bay Area to Lake Tahoe. You can manually enter any highway numbers into the URL string and bookmark that page. Better than typing in a bunch of highway numbers into the search field every time.
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I’ve been using the iPhone 3GS for a few months now. This past weekend was the first time that the quality of the iPhone camera has impressed me. So, what opened my eyes to the possibilities of this handy camera?
Well, I finally took a photo worth printing. Chase Jarvis is absolutely correct that The Best Camera Is The One That’s With You
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I recently installed the RunKeeper Free application on my iPhone 3GS. I’ve used it a couple times to track my walks around the neighborhood, as well as a few short cycling trips. Generally, the application has worked pretty well. It tracks the time and distance of each workout. Afterwards, I can view my exercise log on the RunKeeper website, which offers route maps, calories expended and other wonderful data. Last weekend, RunKeeper recorded my best workout ever.
In a feat that Lance Armstrong would have a difficult time replicating, I biked 63 miles in 23 minutes with an average speed of 161 miles per hour. Or, that’s what RunKeeper reported. The strange thing is that I’ve biked this route before and RunKeeper had given more reasonable numbers previously. I wonder if the overcast skies left RunKeeper all confused.
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I recently upgraded from an iPhone (2G) to an iPhone 3GS. Wow! I heard nothing but bad news about AT&T after the iPhone 3G launch and was really concerned that I would be stuck with a 3G phone on an EDGE connection. So far, I have not experienced any major problems. I have been able to pick up a 3G signal whenever I am outside the house, which is basically when I need it most. Inside, if I turn off Wi-Fi, I am still stuck on EDGE, so no improvement there.
First, the iPhone 3GS is significantly faster than the iPhone 2G. Applications launch faster and games appear to run smoother. However, I blame some of the lag on the iPhone 3.0 software. After I installed the iPhone 3.0 software on the original iPhone, I discovered a noticeable lag whenever I selected the iPod button. However, I was not about to revert back to 2.x. So, I will say that the iPhone 3GS is perceptibly faster than the iPhone 2G.
However, the real improvement is in the data speeds. When I am out on the road and really need a piece of information, EDGE is better than nothing. Google, with its spartan interface, runs pretty fast on EDGE. So, I can still run some basic queries. Plus, I had grown accustomed to the limitations of EDGE and knew better than to give it more than it could handle. With 3G, the gloves are off. I can now exploit the full potential of the iPhone. For example, I needed to lookup the Apple Store on a map earlier today. I knew that I was only 1-2 blocks away, but was uncertain as to the direction. I think the iPhone 3GS was able to display a map of my location and stick a pin on the Apple Store in seconds. I was totally amazed because the iPhone 2G would have taken 20-30 seconds to download the map. I’ve been through more than my fair share of waiting for maps to download in the past two years. 3GS. Totally worth it.
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Some colleges offer conversational Chinese. Others teach business Chinese. However, for Chinese Americans, the real deal is Restaurant Chinese. If you want to order off the Chinese menu, but can’t quite figure out a few of the characters, what do you do? At one point in time, I could only order dishes whose names I had memorized. I couldn’t experiment or try something new because I couldn’t read the entire menu. Now, I have a solution.
Last weekend, I used the DianHua Dictionary iPhone application to order 红烧划水 and 京都里肌. For the first dish, I didn’t recognize the third character. For the second dish, I didn’t recognize the fourth character. If I used a typical Chinese-English dictionary, I would have to count the strokes of the radical, look up the radical, then count the remaining strokes and look up the word. A slow and sometimes unreliable process. However, in DianHua, I copy the character with my finger and the application tells me the pronunciation and meaning of the character. Yum!
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Something appears to be missing. I can read the article. I see the reload button. I see an e-mail button. I see two buttons for changing the font size. And, I see the save button. But, where is the back button? Once I read an article, I get stuck in a dead end.
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AppleInsider reports that Apple is developing biometric-based security features for the iPhone and Mac. While the concept sounds promising, I cannot help but think of how their current facial recognition efforts in iPhoto consistently triggers false positives.
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I tried out the free wi-fi at Starbucks this morning. It works. The good news is that Starbucks is practically every where. The bad news is that when I usually need wi-fi, I’m not inside a Starbucks. I really need free wi-fi inside Costco, Target, and Ranch 99. Now that would be good.
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