The new Palm Treo Pro could be the best device for people who need Chinese and English friendly operation of SMS and Email, and an amazing Chinese <-> English and Chinese <-> Chinese dictionary too.
The Treo Pro will start shipping in September for $550 for Unlocked GSM + Wifi + GPS + 400 MHz CPU + Good Battery + 2MP Camera
Additionally, Opera Mobile for Windows Mobile is supposed to be as good or better than Safari on the iPhone, so with EDGE, 3G and WiFi, this would be a great alternative to the iPhone. Additionally, the Treo Pro is smaller than the iPhone!
Dictionary: Pleco Dict including the 现代汉语规范词典 for Chinese <-> Chinese and the 21世纪大英汉词典 for 280,000 including proper nouns like cities, countries and even 16 Simpson’s TV show guest stars! It’s a very useful $99 upgrade on top of the standard package, or about $200 in total if you’ve never purchased an earlier Pleco version.
Input-method-wise, CE-Star (http://www.mobem.com/) has a built in handwriting recognizer and decent Pinyin input but costs a lot of money ($43.50), but there’s a keyboard-only one called ZTA4 (http://www.ztqj.com/) that’s free and actually really nice - has a slick interface and it does a very good job with intelligently guessing what you’re trying to type. It doesn’t enable Chinese support on English-language phones, though, while CE-Star does.
Of course, Windows Mobile also runs Skype and MSN Messenger
Just need to make sure I can load the Chinese language version of Windows Mobile 6.1 on the Treo Pro and we’re in good shape!
inhabitants of North Eastern England and their Dialect the dialect is the oldest from of continually used English in the world totally unintelligible to anyone else. You thought Jamaican patois was weird try geordie…
“eee a divvent knaa if am gonna gan doon ta watch the footbaall the neet’
Translates as: hmm i dont know i am going to watch the football tonight
In My Bed lyrics (Naega Nuweottteon Chimdae)
오늘 들었어 네게 새로운 남자가 생겼다고 벌써
니 친구의 입을 통해서 모두 다 퍼졌어
니가 어떻게 사귀고 있는지 너무 놀라버렸어
나에게 주었던 똑같은 선물을 만들어줬어
똑같은 내용이 담긴 편질 덧붙였어
이런 사랑은 처음이라면서 baby
내가 누웠던 침대에 누워 내게 주었던 눈빛을 주며
사랑을 나눠 다른 사람과 어떻게 벌써 이렇게 날 잊어
믿어지지가 않아 정말 날 사랑하기는 한 건 맞아
나는 아직도 다른 사랑은 생각조차도 하지 못하는데
나를 불렀던 똑같은 호칭으로 그 사람을 부르고
내가 널 데려 간 곳들을 그 사람 손잡고
마치 처음가보는 사람처럼 설레이는 척하며
모든 게 나와 함께했던 소중한 추억들인데
그 사람과 다시하면 다 지워질텐데
우리 추억들을 왜 지우는데 왜왜
내가 누웠던 침대에 누워 내게 주었던 눈빛을 주며
사랑을 나눠 다른 사람과 어떻게 벌써 이렇게 날 잊어
믿어지지가 않아 정말 날 사랑하기는 한 건 맞아
나는 아직도 다른 사랑은 생각조차도 하지 못하는데
내가 탔던 차 내가 앉던 의자
내가 서있던 자리에 그 사람이 있어
날 사랑한다고 말하던 입술로
이제 다른 사람의 입을 맞추고 있어
내가 누웠던 침대에 누워 내게 주었던 눈빛을 주며
사랑을 나눠 다른 사람과 어떻게 벌써 이렇게 날 잊어
믿어지지가 않아 정말 날 사랑하기는 한 건 맞아
나는 아직도 다른 사랑은 생각조차도 하지 못하는데
내가 누웠던 침대에 누워 내게 주었던 눈빛을 주며
사랑을 나눠 다른 사람과 어떻게 벌써 이렇게 날 잊어
믿어지지가 않아 정말 날 사랑하기는 한 건 맞아..
I heard it today
That you already have a new man
From you friends mouth, it was passed on
How you were keeping company surprised me
You made the same present that you gave me
Adding a letter with the same content
Saying that this kind of love is a first for you, baby
Lay in the bed I laid in
Giving the same look you once gave me
Split love with another person, how could you already forget me like this
I don’t believe it, did you ever really love me
I still can’t fathom loving again yet
Call him by the same nickname you called me
Hold his hand at the places I took you to
Like a person at a march for the first time, pretend to wait in anticipation
Those were all precious memories made with me
They’ll all be erased if you do them with him too
Why are you erasing our memories, why why
Lay in the bed I laid in
Giving the same look you once gave me
Split love with another person, how could you already forget me like this
I don’t believe it, did you ever really love me
I still can’t fathom loving again yet
The car I rode in
The chair I sat in
That person is standing in my place
The lips that once told me they loved me are now matching someone else’s lips
A good friend encouraged me to try Meebo, and online unified instant messaging client. If you live on planet ASCII-only, then that might be fine, but if you work with other languages that is probably a complete deal-breaker. Using Meebo, trying to select other input methods they are just completely grayed out - unable to be selected.
On the other hand, there are two unified instant messaging clients that I’ve found to be very stable, very convenient, and have great i18n support:
Unified communications (UC) is “an industry term used to describe all forms of call and multimedia/cross-media message-management functions controlled by an individual user for both business and social purposes” [1]. This potentially includes the integration of fixed and mobile voice, e-mail, instant messaging, desktop and advanced business applications, Internet Protocol (IP)-PBX, voice over IP (VoIP), presence, voice-mail, fax, audiovideo and web conferencing, unified messaging, unified voicemail, and whiteboarding into a single environment offering the user a more complete but simpler and more effective experience.
Maybe an iPhone and a Mac Book Air already qualifies as a “Unified Messaging System”. Fax’s are obviously easily directed to your email Inbox, but there is still something missing.
Sadly, it seems that Google is probably the best positioned entity on the planet to provide “Unified Messaging”. Just plug Google Mail into the gaim/libpurple multiple instant message interface instead of gtalk, and then somehow force the Skype guys to jump on the bandwagon and you’re done with the desktop/web side. Just need to figure out a way to handle SMS and voice.
Maybe the next “Hotmail” is in here somewhere… That simple idea that’s sitting right under our nose. That way that will we can ever so slightly change the way people use computers, that could potentially be worth something.
On top of the actual paper copy of “Founders at Work” that I’m reading for some reason, I’ve put together the list of audible books I’ll be going through next…
I’ve already started listening to Kissinger’s foreign policy book and it’s an absolutely incredible read. If you’re interested in international relations and recent history, I think you’ll also find this one enlightening. I might put it up there with Legacy of Ashes, the history of the CIA, which was also an incredible read!
Got all geeked out about two things today… One was a really strange bug on my Mac’s version of Rails… Had to patch the rails time.rb and conversions.rb to get it all worked out. If get an error that looks something like:
NoMethodError: private method `to_date’ called for Sun Jun 22 21:02:51 +0800 2008:Time
Second, I’ve been wanting to improve the way online times/dates are handled, and known this can be done via Javascript and storing times in UTC, but hadn’t see how easy this is. Just take a look at TheRailsWay.com’s “scribbish.js” file. The functions you’re interested in are:
Under the market economy you are rewarded to moving resources from where they are undervalued to where they are valued more — and punished severely for misallocating resources.
There’s a great old book by george soros, alchemy of finance, that you should read to better understand the market.
If the year was 1900 and you operated the #1 wagon wheel factory in the country, what would you do? Answer - CHANGE. The market changes. Everything changes. We either capitalize on the change, or ignore the change and get hurt by it — but no matter how hard we close our eyes, the change will happen just the same.
There’s a great Photoshop book called “The Photoshop Anthology“. I picked it up at Amazon a while back for $26 USD. The publisher sent me an email a few days ago announcing that the book is available for free download for the month of May!
If you’re been meaning to learn Photoshop, save yourself $26 and go download the PDF for free - right from the publisher.
Due to the upcoming Beijing Olympics, the 外交部 (Foreign Affairs Office) is clamping down on Visas. Sometime in lat April/early May, the 外交部 stopped issuing 多次 (Multiple Entry) visas under any circumstances. See CNR.cn
对符合条件的申请者，中方未停止签发多次入出境签证。
However…
正常来华将不会受到影响。
Additionally, in retaliation for the fingerprinting of foreigners entering the United States, China has not issued *ANY* Visa-Upon-Arrival for any American since 2004. If you are from a country other than America, you many qualify for a Visa on Arrival at the ports of Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Dalian, Fuzhou, Xiamen, Xi’an, Guilin, Hangzhou, Kunming, Guangzhou (Baiyun Airport), Shenzhen (Luohu, Shekou) and Zhuhai (Gongbei). See the detailed requirements.
Foreigners staying in China for an extended period must switch to a Z Type (Work) Visa. If visiting China for business purposes, your host must visit the 外交部 (Foreign Affairs Office) to secure a 邀请信 (Invitation Letter) on your behalf. Otherwise, you’re basically left with a Tourist Visa.
You can get Mainland China entry visas in Hong Kong, but visa processing requires 4 Business Days for the Standard Service. You can get the Visa more quickly, but the price is much higher. In agent called “CTS” in Hong Kong that can provide convenient Visa service.
If you are in Shanghai, the VisaInChina service is probably your best bet for Visa processing. They’ve even put together a great FAQ about the Olympic Visa Restrictions and what you should do… The current theory is that Visa madness will be rectified after the Olympics. Not sure if I would count on that though…
