Youtube, Digg unblocked in China today

After a recent speech made by Hu Jintao claiming that more freedom would be available for the Chinese populous in the near future, the 'great firewall' of China seems to have shrunk significantly.

As of this morning sites like Digg, Youtube, and Collegehumor now available to anyone on the net in China. Restrictions remain, Google news and wikipedia are still blocked but this bodes well for the future.

My brother Matthew who has been living in Shanghai for the last few months confirmed the new web freedom. Though, like many other tech savvy westerners in China he has found ways to circumvent the restrictions. One can only assume that portions of the Chinese citizenry have also found these holes in the wall.

From his experience, most young people in china are aware of the sites they can't visit and find the restriction embarrassing.

IMAP comes to GMAIL

IMAP is now available on Gmail. Looks like its only on select gmail and google aps accounts, not everyone has it, i encourage you to check.   I did, i found it, i love it.  

I'm using mail.app with my google aps account and i love it (the enable IMAP feature still hasn't appeared on my normal gmail account).

Gmail is the best email around.  Its does have one achilies heel, it not really on hte desktop.

You've been able to POP your gmail to Thunderbird or Apple Mail for a while now, but who wants to do that.  Its really inconvenient for multiple devices.  Google was keeping things going with some of the best clients made for email.  GMAIL Mobile is the best way to get mail on your phone,  I used it instead of the native mail client on my Blackberry Pearl.

It was a slight annoyance, but the unbeatablity of Gmail really made this insignificant.  All was right with the world until the iPhone came along.  The lack of 3rd party dev. on the iphone (apple says that they'll open the IPhone up for Feb 2008) made gmail a real hassle.  Google engineers are obviously on the job, and have started testing the new IMAP service.  

If you're not seeing it in your account settings, hopefully you will be soon.

Living Low Cost in Los Angeles

While 'project mayhem' may not be in your immediate future, you don't have to look far to start feeling a little like Tyler Durden.

As you might imagine. Living in a tent has advantages and numerous disadvantages. Its cheap, it simplify and you feel like you just dropped out of a frame of Fight Club while you glance around your office thinking, "none of these pansys live in a tent". Beyond that its just plain roughing it.

Angelenos may associate the Palos Verdes Peninsula with high price real estate, grand sea vistas, and Trump National Golf Course. Palos Verdes ('PV' or simply ‘the hill’) has been the quiet conservative refuge for the 'pony club' set since the 60s. In PV the condos go for $1000 a square foot and the peninsula grocery store is packed with $100k whips.

I’ve decided to cut the prim and proper city down to size by tenting it long term. Well, I'm not on a crusade or anything. I'm just looking to save a buck, but I don't mind putting a political bent on it. Two thing are for sure, the neighbors don't like it and feeling a little bit 'Fight Club' is intoxicating.

Living in LA can be expensive, especially if you’re surviving on your blog’s non existent income. Most of the folks at my office are paying between $900 and $1200 a month for their modest South Bay digs. And that only covers there part of the rent. All of them are sharing apartments or houses with groups of people. It’s the way things are done in Los Angeles. No one likes it, but everyone deals with it.

I’m no longer playing the game that way. Loyal ManyDigit readers may remember my visit to meet Jay Shafer, modern father of the Tiny House revolution. I really wanted to do something like that. Live simply and save my money for other things, like travel, and paying down credit card debt.

While camping in Colorado last month I had a revelation, I should just live in my tent. Most of my ideas go no where. I just talk about them with my friends once then they fade into the darkness. This time the stars seemed to be aligning correctly. The lease on my high priced LA apt. was coming to an end so I poked around to find someone who would be willing to sublease a camping space to me. Half jokingly I placed an add on craigslist.com, and in two days I had a deal worked out with a leaser in Palos Verdes. For $150.00 plus utilities a month I could have his patio/backyard and use of his bathroom and kitchen.

In a marathon effort, I got rid of nearly all of my furniture, I kept my clothes, my laptops, my camping gear and I moved in.. err out. I’ve been living the good life for 2 weeks now and I think I could do in indefinitely.

I’ll be writing some more about the new lifestyle I’ve discovered over the coming days and months, so check back. I will say this; the lady next do waters her garden every morning at 5:50am and inadvertently gives me and my positions a good watering down- a challenge that I’m learning to deal with.

You might ask what I’m doing with the grand a month I’ve been saving. The answer is “Whole Foods”. I’ve been eating like a king.

Bad Poetry - Good Times.

I'm a big fan of bad poetry. I enjoy writing poetry that deep down i know is aweful, but i don't think that should bar me from sharing or publishing it.

I find myself spending more and more time posting my really bad poems on verybadpoetry.com. It's starting to really eat into my productivity, but I don't care.

You can read random poems on the front page or you can browse through the archive and find some real gems. I joined the poet hall so you can find my aweful poems pretty easily.

Check it and publish something. It's cathartic.

HTC Touch-Flo

With the fever pitch building around the iPhone’s release in a few weeks, other manufacturers are trotting out interesting takes on the touch GUI. The LG Prada has already hit the streets and is most commonly pointed out as ripping off the iPhone, I think its closer to the Dulce and Gabana Razr. Last week videos of HTC’s touchable user interface started showing up on the net.

Instead of re-imagining how a phone should be, HTC basically combined some already available touch shortcuts and tied them to a slicker and easier to comprehend UI layout.

Since the first Palm devices started hitting the main stream you’ve been able to assign short cuts to simple motions of the stylus across the touch screen. For instance, dragging the stylus from the bottom of the screen to the top could open your calendar.

HTC has taken things further. Instead of a stylus the focus is on the finger, a hallmark of the iPhone philosophy. But that’s where the similarity seems to end. Dragging your finger from the bottom of the screen to the top appears to turn a cube below the screen and a separate set of functions is displayed.

I think it’s a good way to organize the many hats that smart phones wear. More interestingly this new GUI runs on top of a regular installation of Windows Mobile. HTC should just start distributing this as a skin for use on any Windows smart phone with a touch screen. It might bring a segment of the market that generally would avoid windows.

Excited digger already looking to trade in an iPhone

I just saw this post when i searched digg for cellphonetradins.com to see if anyone else had discovered it.

How to get an iPhone

You've got an iPod and a cell phone, trade them in for the cash to make your iPhone dreams come true.



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