Whoever uses DSLR knows it is really annoying when the dirt comes into the body of the DSLR- this is particularly bad when you were traveling, you either have to spend time on photoshop or live with the large dots on ALL of your photos. Watching the commercials from Canon on touting its latest dust removal technology, I was very impressed, but I was wondering how effective is the dust removal system from latest Canon 400D DSLR. To save you some time (and money), you better look at this review site, which compared Canon, Sony, Pentex, Samsung DSLR, the conclusion was none of the removal systems are as effective as a $3 air blower.
March 26th, 2007
I am current AA gold member, which will get 50% bonus miles for each flight I fly, but it is expiring this month, I didn’t travel that much to qualify again for this year. I just cannot fly without elite membership.. luckily, AA has this status match policy for my employer, so I just called them to match my Delta frequent flyer program elite status, I was Delta’s silver elite member, guess what - AA just awarded me platinum membership using the match policy.. wow, AA rocks!
February 17th, 2007
I must say Mr. Jobs is a very good public speaker, if I were there at SF listen to his pitch, I’d buy the cleverly marketed iPhone immediately, but luckily I was not there… Obviously the investors don’t think taht way, they are getting crazy about the new phone and thinking it is the next big thing, at least as big as the original iPod that saved Apple (Computer) Inc.
Maybe I am dumb, but how big deal is this phone? Is it really that big that can push the stock value 8%? Let’s look at the reality, the mobile phone market is a very mature market, most consumers still use phones for talking only or sending SMS, except business men who really have their life count on push-IMAP email (normally managed by Exchange server). how many consumer users will like to pay $599 for a really-looking-cool phone? I’d highly doubt this phone can have over 2M units sold in the first year, assuming each unit 200 profilt, that is about $400M profits, this alone is not sufficient to support the current stock price level.
let’s checking the features of this phone:
- google map… I don’t think it is that useful if the phone doesn’t have built in gps chipset.
- mac os X software… yeah it is nice, but I doubt I’d really spend time to read html on the device because afterall, it is still too small, plus, I don’t think you can install any software on this phone (unlike smartphone)
- no wifi? how can a mobile computer without wifi? I am sure you will have to pay big bill if you rely on cingular to read html
- as usual, you cannot change battery, you cannot add memory, it is closed, I cannot agree on this given now the entire world is moving toward open…
Regardless of the shortcomings, I believe Apple has made a leap toward creating innovation, I’d like to see iPhone 2 before I jump on it…
(be careful with Steve’s presentation, sometimes his chart is misleading, e.g. one page showing 200+ patents for iPhone, here the fine print is 200+ patents filed, a patent filed and issued are very different)
January 9th, 2007
As promised, here is the rest of exciting things happened around us, hope you are having \”fun with Jane and Sherwood\”.
- Christimas holiday celebration is the largest in scale so far. First of all, this is the first time Sherwood\’s parents to come over US to see how American people enjoyed the holidays. Secondly, Jane and Sherwood setup Christimas tree to celebrate the holidays for the first time ever since they moved to the house 5 years ago. This is also the first time for Sherwood in his life to setup one. The end result has been pretty stunning, especially in the night time thanks to 1250 lights and 50+ ornaments on the tree. Finally we have such a huge Christimas eve dinner that totally eight people barely eat half of the stuff.
- Getting crazy to buy a PS3. Sherwood and Jane participated in an online fight to place a PS3 station into their cart on launch date, but unfortunately, we failed miserably, leaving both of us sad and mad. Half an hour before the official time Costco said it would post the PS3 link, we were nervewrecks hawking at the site…around 10:40, chaos began. Each of us had about 10 windows opened simultaneously and were alternating back and forth in an attempt to get through (kept on getting page errors due to the overload) - it was a REAL test of endurance and patience!!! Each time we reached the next step, the very next one would fail and we would have to start all over again. It was not until later that we learned from a forum that there are tricks - such as saving the page each time a milestone is reached, and holding down the control key down while clicking furiously at the link - word has it that out of the 10 windows, 8-9 will fail but one will go through). Maybe the traditional way of physically lining up isn’t so bad after all…*sigh*
- Sherwood finally travelled so much that his frequently flyer mileage is enough to buy a round trip ticket to Asia, meanwhile, Sherwood\’s contribution to RDU airport has tripled, he has used the airport 21 times this year.
- Tigeryao.com has changed a lot without incurring significant development expense. Major changes include: New baby blog is created and owned by Owen, it is very well received among families and friends, new features added to main blog and baby blog to prevent spams, 26 new albums added to photo gallery. Overall in 2006 site total page view reached 305529 hits and 3.4GB total data usage (according to my web host). Maybe it is time to add google adWords for some cash.
- Among the first few people installed and used legal copy of Microsoft Windows Vista because I have MSDN. Overall, the real excitement was the moment after the install ended, that is also when the excitement ended. The only thing that I liked is really the cool Aero 3D user interface. Nevertheless, I have a firm belief that Vista will create huge positive impact on the overall PC hardware business because it needs such powerful computing power to render it nicely. Somehow I think Vista is more of a copycat of mac OS X on several things, you know what I am talking about if you are a MAC user.
December 25th, 2006
Merry Christmas, dear readers to tigeryao.com! 2006 is a great year to remember to each of you, here we want to share with you something special that happened to us, enjoy reading and hope you can share with us the news about you.
- First and also the most importanly, we are lucky enough to be the first two among 5 billion people in the world to see a little guy named Owen Yao.
- Jane celebrated her first birthday for not being a twenty something, Jane viewed this birthday very special just because now we have three people to celebrate.
- Sherwood got his first time cruise experience on a beautiful Norweigien Cruise ship - Jewel - to East Carribbean, include San Juan Purto Rico, Antigua, US Virgin Island, Bahama etc. Interestingly this is also his first time experience to travel (leisure) without Jane for the first time - amazingly, Sherwood survived himself by bring his parents, and brought home some very dark skin which made Jane had difficulties to recognize Sherwood.
- 2006 is the first year that Jane and Sherwood didn’t travel to overseas, but we did manage to travel pregnantly (hope this is a word, screw the grammer) to some USA places include Portsmouth, NH, Cape cod, MA, Newport, NH etc. The most memorable thing was a half day whale watching boat tour.
- We watched about 52 movies together this year, that is more than 60% drop Year over Year, but this still beats main street’s estimate for a first year parents. The 10 best in our humble opinion include “The Departed”, ”Cars”, “Da Vinci code”, “Over the hedge”, “Click”, “Eight Below”, “World Trade Center”, “Pursuit of Happiness”, “Borat”, “Thank you for smoking”.
Stay tuned and look for the update for part 2.
December 25th, 2006
For people with visiting family members from other countries, B-2 visa must sound familiar to you. Typically your family members will be granted a stay of six month upon they pass the US Immigration and Custom checkpoint at the airport. If you wanted to extend their stay for whatever reasons, you have to file an request to US Homeland Security, this request must be filed with $200 per person processing fee, this sounds expensive.
Actually I found you can get that extension in a better way - just (more…)
December 18th, 2006
My last blog was almost a month ago, I was on the road for more than three weeks! it was just too tiring to sit in front of computer at the end of each exciting day. The most exciting part that I have to share with you is my first cruise experience, as you read in my prevoius blog, to east carribbean via NCL Jewel.
Overall the “Freestyle” is by no means just a brand of NCL, there is indeed a lot of freedom on the (more…)
December 10th, 2006
It is very dificult to arrange any travel after the addition of Owen to the family, this year’s fall foiliage trip has to be simple, that left us with only one choice - our backyard, which is only 30 meters from where I publish this blog..
After the backyard trip, we stopped by Jane’s school before we had our celebration for Jane’s birthday at Red Palace. The color at Duke Garden is very good, it is even better than the touristy Williamsburg according to the words of my mom.
November 5th, 2006
Next Posts
Previous Posts