Bye Internet

Bye Internet and Silicon Valley. We're off to sunny-relaxing-no-Internet land of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico next week.

Guess I'll be missing this event next week...

Dang AT&T

AT&T is just on a roll recently. As if sending out 300 pages to iJustine is not enough on the consumer front or the AT&T Hell on the business front with Lisa, they decided to mess with moi!

Being how anal I am with our personal finance, I know my monthly local phone and DSL is around $40 monthly, so I was a bit surprised when the a $44 bill came.

Now, $4 is not a lot to deal with, but out of curiosity, I wanted to know why. So I begin to dig into the infamous telecom bill with dozens of lines for various taxes, fees, etc. (you know what I'm talking about).

Then I noticed the item of "Your Listing Is Not Published" raised from $0.28 to $1.25.

(click to see larger image of $0.28 before the fee hike)

(click to see larger image of $1.25 after the fee hike)

But that still doesn't explain why my bill was $4 over, it should've been just $1. So I looked further and noticed that they did this below! Prorated back to May! What da...
I called AT&T immediately and the agent quickly corrects it and acknowledge that "yes, we did raise the fee *significantly* recently".

My home line is no longer "not published", but they said they have a (free) option to just show "than" instead of my full name and will not show home address.

I wonder how long it would take AT&T to change that free option and start charging me again without informing me! Amazing what they get away with! Now go and check your own AT&T bill and see if you got dinged as well.

California people are nice

When Brian and Tammy were in town last week, we took them to Stanford Shopping Center.

They made a comment about how retail staff here in California seem to be friendlier than back home at Chicago. We told them it's probably because of the nice sunny day and people in Palo Alto are just generally happier.

Then few days later, we got this postcard from Max & Co. where Jean bought a sweater that day. Talk about customer service! When was the last time you got a postcard from Gap or even Tiffany's?

Here's what the postcard said, the staff even remembered what we bought, someone was paying attention :)

"Dear Jean,

I wanted to thank you for shopping with us here at Max & Co.
Palo Alto. Your business is greatly appreciated. It was a pleasure
working with you, and I'm happy you found a wonderful sweater
for your fall wardrobe. You'll look so stylish! Come see us again soon.

Sincerely,
Melissa"

(click to see larger image)
front of postcardback of postcard

Gmail video

Google's Gmail team asked the public about a month ago to submit videos for their collaborative Gmail promotional video. It's ready now!

If I recall correctly, the requirements were fairly simple.

• Use the official "red-envelope" icon,
• Create a short video
• The icon must go from left to right of the screen

Here's their official Gmail video, it's a short and interesting 2 minute video.

iPhone by Nokia?

Woah.. is this for real? Talk about "imitation is the best complement"

I'm sure El Jobso has the legal team all over this one...

Update:
It was a given that FSJ would report on this sooner or later. Love his quote, Daniel is brilliant!

"Unless you're the lead dog all you see is another dog's ass, as they say in Alaska."

Puerto Vallarta

Mexio, here we come!

We're going to Puerto Vallarta this coming Saturday for a week of vacation with 2 other couples. Thanks to Brian and Nancy's timeshare!

Cannot wait! Woohoo!


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Find other Twitter-ers

Don't be afraid that you'll be alone in the Twitter world, you should be able to find someone you know there. At the minimum, you can always follow me :)

Twitter added 2 new features recently. Have fun and Twitter away...

Search.Gmail address book search (click image below to see in detail)

Best hands-free headset

Forget that latest bluetooth headset!

Brian's friend brought this one out on Friday when they met up (urgh, while Jean and I were at work). I'm so getting one of these myself. Think this would go perfect with the iPhone?

BK & Tammy's 2007 Bay Area trip

Brian, from Purdue days, and I have always been able to meet up at least once a year since about a decade ago when we left college. Him and Tammy came into town from Chicago on Tuesday this week and we've been playing tourist all over the Bay Area.

We even got a chance to take them to Lunch 2.0 at Spock in Redwood City on Wed.

These few pictures sum up the silliness we've been having over the last 2 days and the trip is not even over yet =) See bottom of the post for a slideshow of all the pictures.

Somewhere in front of Ghirardelli Square. Tammy is trying to pretend she doesn't know those people behind her
We're trying to hold on while on the trolley
Thing you can do while waiting for the trolley
Arguebly one of the most important software on the Mac. Photo Booth.app
Weird choices of t-shirts
Yeeepeee!
One of the few normal group pictures
Go crazy!
Now go ugly!
You can also see the slideshow on Flickr.

Google Map embed

Two years ago (2005) when Google Map first came out, I wrote this tool to help others generate Google Map source code so they can embed a map in their HTML. Today, it's obsolete. Interesting enough, I'm still #2 when you Google for "google map code generator"

Google Maps released a feature to embed map and directions onto your own site with ease that many have gotten use to. e.g. YouTube's embed code that you would copy-paste to your page.

Here's a quick tutorial of how it works.

Create a map or direction on maps.google.com. Once you are done, click on the "Link to this page" link on the top upper hand corner. This link is not new.
But what comes after you click on it is new. Now you have the second option of copying the embed code.Here's an example I did of going from Apple (Cupertino, CA) to Google (Mountain View, CA)

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300 pages of iPhone bill from AT&T

I've heard and read lots of complaints about people getting long iPhone bills from AT&T, because they apparently print *each* data transmissions on the bill.

But iJustine beats them all today when she got *300* pages shipped in a BOX! What da?!?!


Update:
Oh oh, apparently El Jobso is not as impressed.

Fun bike trip up to SF from South Bay

Alright, so not quite *all* the way up to SF, but we tried.

We started from Cupertino, onto Mountain View to pick up Vinh, then attempted to bike all the way up to SF. We only made it to Burlingame, before we gave in to the Art & Jazz festival there and some yummy dessert.

We'll try again before summer is over.

You can also see all the pictures (courtesy of iPhone) here on Flickr.

First stop, Timmy's. Still in 95014


Second stop, Mountain View. Vinh just woke up


Lunch break @ Erik's Deli in Redwood City


Vinh got a flat shortly after lunch @ around Hillsdale mall. Repair in progress...


Burlingame Art & Jazz festival


Hien drove to Burlingame to meet us and took this for us


Using Google Map and one of its features under "My Maps" called "Path Profiler". I approximately mapped out the route and it gave me this map and profile.

Skimming on .Mac Web Gallery

Apple announced a few things last week. You can watch El Jobso's whole presentation here (1 hour and 12 min)

• New iMac (20" and 24" in aluminum and glass), watch a very short commercial.
• New thin keyboad for the iMac & a wireless keyboard w/o numpad.
  
• New iLife '08.
• New iWork '08, including Numbers (Apple's spreadsheet application)
• .Mac for $99/year (same as before) for 10G storage (use to be 1G only)
  

I'm sure you can find all kinds of reviews, pictures & videos about these products, try Google? :) So I'll spare you of reviews here, instead I'll just show you one thing that I thought was pretty cool.

Skimming.

It's an Apple patented method of presenting pictures inside an album (a.k.a set, collection, group, whatever-you-want-to-call-a-bunch-of-pictures). You skim your mouse over a single picture and it'll show you all the pictures in that album so you can decide if you want to open it up or not.

Best to just show you an example on my own .Mac Web Gallery. You'll see 4 albums in my gallery, move your cursor over each one and you'll see skimming.
.Mac Web Gallery also got very "2.0 (AJAX-y)" per Jobs, and feels very desktop-like with lots of cool new features. Go into one of the albums above and try out these controls on the bottom left and right of the page.

Remembrer Michael Jackson?

Saw this on Jason Calacanis of Mahalo's blog this morning. Remake of his famous Thriller


Don't speak Hindi Telugu (Thanks to my ex-coworker Prabhakar for pointing it out to me)? Not to worry, my Indian co-worker passed this onto me with hilarious English subtitles!


Happy Friday.

Dang Oil Drain Plug

Imagine yourself sitting down for a nice dinner. Got the knife, forks, napkin all ready. As you're about to dive into the food, you realize... "I have no food!?!?!"

Now replace the food with engine oil and that's what this klutz did about 2 years ago. Had my car on the ramp, took the filter off, drain all 5 quarts, put the new filter back on. Then realized that I don't have any more new engine oil! Doh!

Ever since, I've been extra careful whenever changing oil. But I could not have prepared for this one. Spent 2 hours under the car with friend Timmy on Sunday trying to remove a very stripped oil drain plug! Don't even ask me how it got stripped in the first place, we still have no idea. For whatever reason, the 11/16 wrench that I've used a dozen times decided it doesn't like the plug anymore.

Now, I know I'm not a mechanic, that's why I only code. But 4 mechanics at the Firestone tried and even they couldn't remove the plug!

Finally, "Rigo" (my favorite mechanic now!) at the local Vallco 76 gas station was able to remove it and even saved it for me.

This is what a new plug suppose to look like, with ridges.


This is what Rigo gave back to me.

Coco and Cammi are famous

My parents have a chihuahua and a stray cat that my little brother found years ago. The two have become inseparable over the years and for those who doubt that dogs and cats don't get along, check this out.

My sister recently submitted one of their pictures to Ebates.com for some contest and actually won $200 (2nd prize), see here.

Fake Steve Jobs came to an end

Very sad day for me. FSJ no more...

For those of you who know me and are in the tech industry. You've probably read lots about the infamous Fake Steve Jobs. The mystery writer started this blog in 2006 and have generated some hilarious and very insightful blogs in the last 14 months. The witty writer knew lots of Apple inside information and had certainly done his/her research regarding Apple & its CEO, Steve Jobs.

There's been several attempts to unveil the mystery writer, including one back in June of this year when I blogged about it. The most recently one was a special link/site setup and sent to fakestevejobs@gmail.com exclusively in an attempt to track the originating IP address. They were able to pinpoint it to Boston area, but immediately got lots of protests from the blogshere as readers prefer keeping FSJ's real identity anonymous. Even I became a suspect as recent as last Friday by famous blogger Josh Bancroft of Intel. He was just kidding though, I think... :)

Today, NYT ruined it for all of us... Why why why?

FSJ: thanks for all the good laughs... Nameste!

Why I enjoy the iPhone

I've been using the iPhone for about a week now and I am loving it!

Lots of people have seen the Apple TV ads, read reviews, or played with it for few minutes at the Apple or AT&T store. But IMHO, unless you really take it home, use it for a week and really test drive it, you won't truly appreciate the beauty and the power of owning one.

Here's a short 10 minute play by play of how I realized the fun of iPhone last week during a lunch break while on jury duty last week.

I wanted to share my healthy lunch choice with my wife, so I took this photo with the 2.0 megapixels build-in camera on the iPhone (not bad quality, huh?) and emailed it to her using Gmail. All of which took about 5 clicks and I was on my way to eating...
As I enjoyed the meal, I noticed a patron who had a bottle of hot sauce in his pocket, I had to twitter that! of course on the iPhone...

There were many choices of twittering that:

• I could've text message (SMS-ed) it
• Emailed it via TwitterMail using the build-in gmail app
  
• Visit one of many sites on the Internet. In this particular case, I used iTweet, which by the way, is becoming my favorite iPhone twitter app.

After the twittering, I put the headphones on, started to watch Onion video podcast while eating.

Then all of a sudden, the audio faded out and my sister's picture came up on the screen (b/c I associated a photo of hers with her contact in my addressbook) with 2 big buttons: "Accept" or "Ignore". Oh! a phone call came in...

I gladly took the call by pressing "Accept". Could've done the same by gently clicking once on the mini microphone as part of the headphone.

As we talked, she wanted to know some information, which required me to open up an email and click on a link to open Safari. And with about 4 clicks, I was reading her a paragraph from Yahoo news (live!) of the article she was inquiring about.

To sum it all up, I was able to do all these simultaneously and in style. To top it all off, I think I'm now known as the "iPhone boy" to the bailiffs at the courthouse and Jobs would be proud of me!

Now what are you waiting for? go and spend that $499 or $599, it'll be worth it :)