stlplaceNot really. Some issues: eligibility, trade-in value of your old clunker (maybe more than $3,500 or $4,500), also your clunker may worth more than its face value (consider the insurance cost and property tax of a new car).
MyMoneyBlog has did some analysis on his/her own (used) vehicles; and Edmunds.com has a comprehensive article including a FAQ.
Via Podcast. Partially inspired by an idea suggested at bbs. But I want to automate it a bit more, here is the software: DopplerRadio. It has both iTune and Windows (Media Player) version. Here is a detailed Windows guide written by Jake Ludington.
The MarketPlace RSS feed is:
http://feeds.americanpublicmedia.org/MarketplacePodcast
The same site also has feed to MartkPlace Morning Report etc.
After download it (the mp3) to PC, I did “sync” (Windows Media Player Sync) it to my Nokia 5800 so that I can listen to it when joggling. It worked beautifully.
Now I started to look at “Music Player” icon on Nokia 5800, I found there is this Podcast icon sits besides Music Player. So I will try that “direct” option next time, saving some hoops 🙂
Bonus material: how to burn music from CD to Nokia 5800
Yesterday President Obama announced he is going to support the Tobacco bill (details by AP). Ironically the President was (is?) a smoker himself.
Today is DTV day, the analog TV will be turned off and the local TV stations will broadcast digital signals only. Go to DTV.gov for the government coupon Digital TV converter box and other information.
Local PBS station (KETC) is running short of funds recently, partly due to the recession, corporate underwriting and viewer donations declined quite a bit. Similar situation is facing KWMU, local NPR station. I am both a fan of PBS and NPR, the programs I paid attention to is Nightly Business News (NBR), and MarketPlace at NPR. The reasons I like them is: they are much better than those Mad Money, Fast Money and other programs on CNBC. I used to watch quite a bit Mad Money for entertainment, but unfortunately it influenced my thinking, from time to time. In the past year I still watch them, but with a much critical mind.
I took some pictures using Nokia 5800 camera yesterday (June 11) evening. Note this is a 3 Mb camera, so the resolution is not great. Yesterday evening we had a thunder storm like weather, we had the sun and lots of clouds at the same time.
From: David Stern
To: Referees in NBA playoff and finals
Subject: new rule on elbow
If Kobe elbows somebody, don’t call him foul. See YouTube video below. And a fan’s story here.
Else (if ordinary guy like Anthony inadvertently elbows somebody like Williams), call him foul.
For some of the auto dealers in this country. I know this title is a bit misleading, but it’s no worse than those “attention getting” balloons flying outside of car dealerships 🙂
Here is their web site. Unfortunately the decriptions are in Chinese, and they require resume in Simplified Chinese. The positions are based in Beijing.
Thanks to my wife who found their Ads at WSJ yesterday. It says apply at their web site: www.china-inv.cn . The application deadline is June 28. As name implies, most are financial related postions, but they do have a few law, IT postions as well.
If you never heard of China Investment Co., they are China sovereign wealth fund who invested in Blackstone (pre-IPO; NY Times) and Morgan Stanley (2007/9; ChinaDaily).
(Update June 11) Here is a review of the software, by experts at Univ. of Michigan.
(Original) Yesterday I read from WSJ that Chinese government is asking the PC makers to install anti-porn software “Green dam” from July 1. I can understand western media’s interest here: the intension of government is more than protecting the Chinese kids, it’s more about controlling access to the world wide web, blah blah blah. I think this kind of analysis overly simplied (and obscured) many things happening in China. The real situation in China is more complicated. Since I grow up in China and read Chinese, I visit Chinese web sites from time to time. One thing I found over the years, is there are much more sex related content in Chinese web sites, even for sites like Sina, Netease (163.com) or Sohu.
(User Interface of Green Dam software, source: WSJ)
TDMA, or TD-SCDMA, is a Chinese domestic 3G standard (Wikipedia). China was not behind the west in terms of 2.5 GSM network and applications in recently years. Actually the development of mobile phones are so successful, the total users of China mobile phones users already exceeded half a billion (source: digitimes). China Mobile (NYSE: CHL), the largest mobile operator, has more than 400 millions customers at the end of 2008.