Category Archives: Tech

$5 to “unlock” the 802.11n feature you already paid for? no way…

They cannot be serious, maybe when people bring the machines back to the Genius Bars to get it unlocked, MAYBE… since the software will be shipped with the new base stations, it won’t be long til it is available on file-sharing networks… Maybe Jeremy Horwitz was right, he was an attorney and shit… (thought it has more to do with accounting…)
Doesn’t matter though, I will probably be getting the new base station, or better yet, the updated Airport Express with 802.11n, if that is ever gonna come out. πŸ™‚

AppleInsider | Apple to impose 802.11n unlocking fee on Intel Mac owners

Core 2 Duo-based Mac owners who want to unlock next-generation 802.11n wireless technologies hidden inside their computers will first have to fork a few bucks over to Apple, AppleInsider has confirmed.Reasons behind the move — and such a small obnoxious fee — are not necessarily clear at the moment. However, iLounge’s Jeremy Horwitz is offering an explanation from some Apple representatives present at last week’s Macworld Expo.

According to the editor, the fee stems from a law called the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which supposedly prohibits Apple from giving away an unadvertised new feature of an already sold product without enduring some onerous accounting measures.

“Because of the Act, the company believes that if it sells a product, then later adds a feature to that product, it can be held liable for improper accounting if it recognizes revenue from the product at the time of sale, given that it hasn?t finished delivering the product at that point,” he wrote.

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alumni event at the Googleplex

Just got back from the alumni event at Google, it was alright, not too exciting, and not too lame either… I actually met some people I haven’t seen since I graduated, so that part was cool… Also got to talk to some current students and picked up a few resumes and cards. What is up with the security at that place though, it was terrible, I felt like I was in a prison or something… I still managed to snap some pics with my Treo…
Here SCS Dean Randall Brant was giving us an update on the recent constructions and developments at the school:

The new (to me at least) CoLab:

upcoming constructions to get rid of the old student center and the parking lot and random buildings behind Wean:

In the bathrooms at Google they had some unit testing programming brain teaser, no I didn’t bother reading it, heh…

Looks like some peeps live there:

break room area and pool table (not pictured), I might get into troubles by posting this coz the very nice security dudes did not like what I was doing…

Oh yeah, somehow I won a 5.5g 30gb black iPod! heh, best use of a business card ever! Obviously, I have a 60gb and a Nano already so this is going straight to Craigslist and if it doesn’t sell there, eBay… you’re welcome to make me an offer, I’m thinking maybe ~200 bucks? It’s BNIB and super awesome yo! (UPDATE: it’s been sold, CL rocks!)

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well, iPhone is disappointing

It’s crazy how many IMs/emails and people stopped by my office and went “you seen the iPhone?”, of course I have, that is just a f’king stupid question… It actually has most of the features I wanted, with the exception of corporate emails and OTA PIM sync with corporate accounts (like Exchange) and high speed wireless connection like HSDPA or EvDO…

From what I heard Cingular still sucks (and believe me, I really really wish this isn’t the case!), those who likes it prolly live in metropolitan areas with lots of towers and never gets out of it, I’d like to be able to make an emergency phone call if I get stuck on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere…

Exclusive contract and shit, looks like I will be waiting for like the 3rd gen iPhone that works with Verizon… If Apple’s previous new products were any indication, this thing is gonna be buggy as hell…

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Happy Holidays, Wii, shopping, and random updates

Haven’t blogged for a few days, I did manage to catch up with most of my feeds and shared a few items in GReader… We didn’t do much for Christmas, just ate at a different restaurant every meal (as usual), played Wii, and shopped, well, we did a lot of shopping…

The Wii is a ton of fun, we only have Wii Sports, which came with the console, and The Legend of Zelda. Wii Sports is fun, I like tennis, bowling, and boxing. πŸ˜€ It is actually pretty good exercise playing Wii, I’m dead serious. I workout quite a bit, run about 5 miles per day and do weights 3-4 times a week, my shoulder and back were sore after playing some tennis. I bought Zelda because I was looking for games to buy for the Wii and it was rated very highly at all the gaming sites. I am not really into gaming, I guess the Zelda series is cool and people out there actually cop the Wii just to play this game. Sherry and I played it, the first task was to herd some goats into the barn, we could not f’king get any of them to go inside the barn. We even googled some strategy guides and it just told us to go to a place so that the goat will be between the barn and me, and it will go in there when you go closer toward the barn. We tried that and the goats always went to the side and went away last minute. (would appreciate any tips, please comment!)

We were pretty excited about boxing day shopping, I made a list of places I had to go shop and I think we hit them all. First stop was Bloomingdale’s and we were there almost sharply at 8 a.m. I finally copped the Number (N)ine jacket I’ve been lusting after for months. That thing is ridiculously expensive and I caught it at 40% off one weekend, but it was still too high. Today It was marked down by 50% and there was a 15% coupon, I applied for a Bloomie card and got another 15%. After all this it was under $1k, pretty damn good deal. πŸ™‚ Sherry didn’t cop anything special, just some random stuff from Zara and Club Monaco. Neiman had a ton of bags on sale, including A LOT of Balenciagas. They didn’t have the motorcycle bag marked down, but there were a ton of other styles for cheap. Nothing really caught her eyes though, plus she just copped a Bottega bag like 2 weeks ago so her bag fund is probably not real high at the moment. The shoppers at Neiman rocked some nice shit, we saw at least 2 Balenciagas and a lady there even had a Hermes Kelly bag (at least I think it was a Kelly, the Birkin is bigger, I think)… Most of the Dior Homme stuff at Neiman were marked down by at least 50%, but all that were left were in bigger sizes like size 52, didn’t have anything that fit me.

For about a month I had been trying to decide between a Bottega and Goyard messenger bag. They are both not cheap so I had to be absolutely sure before I pull the trigger. I would also want to customize the Goyard bag with initials and/or stripes so those would’ve been even harder to figure out. I still couldn’t quite justify spending $2.5-3k on a messenger bag, although I would really use it every single day probably for decades to come, still not easy to justify. We went to the Bottega pre-sale and the messenger bag was not marked down at all, and Goyard never puts anything on sale either. Today at Neiman I spotted a really nice messenger bag by Mulberry, it was on sale and marked down additional 25%, I tried it out and it was pretty f’king dope, so I said f it, cop the Mulberry and forget about the BV and Goyard. I am pretty happy with my decision right now. πŸ˜€

Oh yeah, coincidentally both the jacket and the bag sport RiRi zippers! M6 on the bag and M8’s on the jacket! I like shit with RiRi zippers… πŸ™‚

Tomorrow I will be in Vancouver for a day. My uncle left us last week and I am going to pay my respect at his funeral. He was a very good man and he will be dearly missed. RIP, Dr. Wong.

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PhotoBooth works fine with older Macs

This is not really news or anything, but in case you don’t use Digg and haven’t seen this blogged anywhere before, the PhotoBooth application shipped with newer Macs with built-in iSights works just fine on older Macs. You can’t get this app from Apple even if you are willing to pay for it, but since Sherry has a MacBook, I just copied it from it to my PowerBook G4, it works perfectly fine with my (external) iSight. πŸ˜€

I need this coz it might be useful at new year eve parties… πŸ˜‰

PhotoBooth works with PowerBook G4

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Yelp got “street-smart”…

This is very useful and I’ve always wanted a feature like this, makes so much sense especially when Yelp has a mobile version of their page…

Yelp Blog: Yelp Just Got Even Street-Smarter

Yelp Just Got Even Street-Smarter

And by street-smart, we mean you can now search on Yelp around a specific address, intersection or street, in addition to searching city-wide or around a zip code.

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Thanks to Amazon now we’re getting a Nintendo Wii!!

So I told Sherry to put her name down to get a Wii, the probability was like 1 in 28, not bad, but not good… I didn’t get picked, but she did! But I’m still not sure if it will show up before Christmas. Obviously we have Amazon Prime and upgraded to 1-Day shipping for 4 bucks, but still, they might not ship on or before Thursday… I picked up The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on PriceGrabber and she copped Excite Truck from Amazon… I think we need another pair of controllers…

Sherry’s list of things… » I got a Nintendo Wii…

Andrew told me that Amazon was having a promotion where you can sign up for a chance of purchasing Wii. And I got it!!

I never win anything, this is really really exciting…. Now I’m just waiting for it to get here. I love Amazon!!

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iSight

By now it’s all over the blogosphere that Apple took the iSight off from their online store. I kindda noticed this last Saturday when I searched around for one on Amazon. I bought one from a guy at Cafe Sappore, our neighborhood coffee shop in North Beach. He upgraded his PowerBook to a MacBook Pro and no longer needed it. I had always wanted an iSight, but buying 2 of them was quite a bit of money considering you can get like a 8MP digicam for less. But I got Sherry a MacBook for x’mas and it had a built-in iSight, I had to get one for myself so we can do vid chat when I’m in south bay during the week. I suspect A LOT of people now want iSights as well because their family and friends are getting new Macs with built-in iSights.

Apple probably took them off at a pretty bad time, I think they would’ve sold quite a few of them this holiday season, HAHA!

Now the iSights are going for more than full price on eBay, pretty insane. This is actually quite typical of Apple products, it’s amazing really. Like when we parted out Sherry’s iBook G3 when it was replaced by Apple with a G4 free of charge, we found out that the Airport card (non-Express) for the G3 was no longer available anywhere, and used ones were commanding almost full price on eBay!

Now that CS3 beta is out maybe I’ll upgrade to a MBP and sell the iSight, I copped mine for 70 bucks, great deal really… πŸ˜†

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