Lisbon?

This is not a photo from Lisbon. This church stands in the east banks of the Guadalupe River and west of Highway 101 in San Jose, California. The neighborhood around here used to be occupied by immigrants from Portugal (mainly from the Azore Islands). You can meet lots of different ethnic groups here in Silicon Valley and that is really exciting! You can also eat lots of different food from all over the world. It is surely one of the motivations for me to go on an overseas trip. Thanks to meeting lots of interesting people and encountering different cultures here in Silicon Valley.

Girls' Favorite-Flying

Girl's favorite hobby is flying. For example, Angelina Jolie does fly! Actually in the US, A flying lesson is cheaper. I heard that cheaper than India, Japan and etc. For flying lesson, Piper Seneca, Cessna-152, Cessna-172 are usually used. My friend paid about $12000 to get a license.You should research the cost and your health condition. Sometimes, you just can't qualified as a pilot because of blood pressure and so on.

Skincare navi--Nintendo DS

The Japanese game machine company, Nintendo and the game software company, Konami try to attract ladies for game market with Nintendo DS, a small game machine. The DS will give a woman advice to take more fruits or drink water etc for her skincare according to her skin condition and also says about womanly manners. The machine goes on sale in Japan in October with a price tag of about $37.

Gift for Dad

Love my dad and want to make him very happy. So I bought a 12-language Speaking Global Translator with the price tag of $229.99. Ouch! He travels a lot, so I think he will like it! It's tough not to talk about this.

Ladies' favorites

Amercian ladies' favorite sites are as follows, according to comScare Media Metrix.

1. http://www.ivillege.com/

2. http://www.glam.com/

3. http://www.everydayhealth.com/

4. http://www.condenet.com/

5. http://www.womensforum.com/

6. http://www.familynetwork.com/

7. http://www.babycenter.com/

8. http://www.theknot.com/

9. http://www.sheknows.com/

10. http://www.bhg.com/

Where is my friend?

Met Sam, who is the CEO of Loopt, several times at Where 2.0 and Dow Jone's Venture one event. Loopt offers social mapping service. In short, you can see your friends' location on your cell phone screen. You can meet or avoid them efficiently. Loopt has more than 100,000 users, thanks to its unique and fun idea. Check out Loopt at http://www.loopt.com/

Travel Deals on Web

For economize travel expenses,

listed here are some of travel web sites.

For airfare references

www.airfarewatchdog.com

www.sidestep.com

Last 59 minutes deal

www.site59.com

For Japanese trip (mainly in Japanese)

www.airgorilla.com

www.rakuten.co.jp

www.bestrsv.com

For US global or domestic travelers
www.orbitz.com
www.hotwire.com
www.expedia.com

You can bet your travel according to your budget
www.priceline.com

Von Voyage!

Free Int'l Call --gips

Recently I bought a notebook PC with a built-in camera and a microphone. So I can call and talk with anybody overseas by connecting through Internet, meaning click and talk with my PC by using applications such as Skype. You can save on regular phone call charges. For the work place, I encountered gips (Global IP Solutions) in Communications Developers Conference. One of the products of gips offers business customers free, high-quality voice over any network. This reduces the high cost of regular phone toll charges within an enterprise, a gips engineer said.

My Perfect Weekend

My perfect weekend goes like this;
Toyota's robot wakes me up with nice music, then I drive tothe beach in an all electric Tesla Roadster, dine out, and then stay at a nice hotel there.

Solar Energy

Solar energy can be used for heating up buildings, cooking, to heat engines, for solar cars, etc. We have it at home for heating our swimming pool, because we live in sunny California.
In Silicon Valley, the Energy Summit 2007 was held with the purpose of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and for improving national security with attendance including former U.S. Secretary of State Mr. George Shultz, Mr. Tom Werner, CEO of SunPower, San Jose Mayor Mr. Chuck Reed etc.

GPS

Got lost and was late for doctor's appointment. So I decided to take some-sort of measurements to prevent being late. Went to Costco, and learned the charge of Veraizon's VZ navigator service for it's cell phone (because I can only find that GPS service for its cell phone user at the retailer), How much? $9.99 a month or $2.99 a day. Well, my cell is not with Veraizon. Checked a road map book there, costs about $26, which only covers in Bay Area. Went back again to the electric corner and finally bought a Magellan RoadMate, because Costco deals with it only and was kind of cheap. Paid $270.61 ($249.99 plus tax $20.60--CA's 8.5% tax rate). At the parking lot, an Indian guy, who happend to pass by, helped me set it up (I think he is an engineer). I have been testing it ever since. Not so fancy, but it works. It's OK at this moment.Maybe I should have bought DASH instead, so that I could search Yahoo local.

People are mean on the web?

This is the photo of the founder and president of Six Apart, Mena and an about 1-year-old new baby dog. Six Apart offers Blog tools, Blog services and Blog journals etc.

Mena gave me some very thoughtful insights. What impressed me was her thoughts that a blog can be very easily nasty to others by saying mean things which you would never say in front of people in real life. Mena said we, the web users should have etiquette for NET community, which is just like in everyday life.