Wow, I can never remember how to dial from China to the US (001) is the answer, but “howtocallabroad.com”:http://howtocallabroad.com has the general list.
Posts Tagged ‘China’
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Utilities in Seattle
2008
10.07
10.07
It is amazing how easy it is to setup all your utilities from your coach in Seattle. You literally don’t have to talk with anyone. The only problem is that URLs for signup are so buried in information, As an illustration and what a dashboard should look like to signup and then to monitor/pay your bills:
“Seattle Public Utilities”:http://seattle.gov/util has no obvious place to “signup” so the link is http://www2.cityofseattle.net/util/services/closeopen/a.asp You do have to go read your water meter, so I guess I lied, it is the one trip off your coach 
Then you use http://www.seattle.gov/util/Services/Billing/Manage_Your_Account/COS_004076.asp to setup bill payment, get garbage cans, check recycling dates and so forth.
“Seattle City Light”: for some reason is completely different from the utilties company so you need your own application http://www.seattle.gov/light/accounts/resa/ and this application doesn’t start service, but starts the review. It also has a billing area, but doesn’t seem to have a place to see Bill Payment Online and Automatic Bill Payment Program. But doesn’t seem to have a way to look at your bill online.
“Puget Sound Energy”:http://pse.com provides Natural Gas. (Confused yet!) so there is yet another. It has complete bill online, but this one looks like you need a call to 1-888-CALLPSE to get it going. So they are better at looking at bills online at http://www.pse.com/solutions/youraccount/Pages/mypseWhySignUp.aspx
“Comcast”:http://comcast.com. They have the cable franchise here and lots of HDTV. I really dislike their HD DVR but at least it is only a $15/month lease and as soon as I figure it out, I’ll get an HD TiVO. Still they provide really high speed internet at least in my neighborhood of 10Mbps regularly. Their site first puts you through an address locator so they can figure out what services are available at https://www.comcast.com/localization/Localize.ashx?StreetName=120+39th+Ave+East&AptNumber=&Zip=&x=72&y=6&FormName=AddressOrZipCode&StreetNumber=&StreetDesignation=&City=&State=&Referer=%2Fshop%2Fbuyflow%2Fdefault.ashx%3Fhp%3D1. Their offerings are really confusing, but the basic thing to get is what is called Digital Starter for $56/month and then the $15/month HD DVR option. Then for Internet, it is $45/month plus $3/month to rent the cable modem. So expensive. They take you through this complicated thing then actually have a representative talk with you through chat. Sad that something can be so complex, someone actually have to look at it.
“Qwest”:http://qwest.com. There are only two choices for true local phone service, Qwest and AT&T. You can use VOIP over your internet connection too, but then personally, I’d just use a cell phone. I normally like to get a backup real landline. $13.50/month and you can get $6/month and $4/month international plan.
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AT&T new international data plans
2008
08.26
08.26
When you go overseas, AT&T has a $65/month unlimited Blackberry dataplan for their EDGE phones. For the iPhone, you can’t escape high international voice roaming calls, but there are four very expensive data plans that you can get, but which are cheaper than the rack rate which is $20/MB
| Data/Mo. | Cost | Cost/MB
| 20MB | $25 | $1.25 |
| 50 | 60 | $1.20 |
| 100 | 120 | $1.20 |
| 200 | 200 | $1.00 |
O’Grady’s PowerPage – Your Mobile Technology Destination
AT&T announced two new international calling plans for iPhone users. According to MacNN, the plans are divided into 100 and 200 megabyte data transfer sizes and cover roaming in 67 countries including Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan and Mexico.
The plans supplement existing 20 and 50 megabyte plans, which retail at US$25 and US$60 per month with the 100 and 200 megabyte plans retail for US$120 and US$200 per month, respectively.
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Olympic finals
2008
08.24
08.24
! What is more significant IMHO is how concentrated the US medals are. Michael Phelps accounted for no less than 8 of the 36 gold that the US won. “China”:http://www.nbcolympics.com/countries/country=chn/medals/index.html is much more diversified in terms of medals: | Sport | Golds | I didn’t know China was so strong in Weightlifting and Shooting. And what the heck is “Tampoline”:http://www.nbcolympics.com/trampoline/index.html? There are definitely sports that should get more airtime than say Beach Volley ball. The Synchronized swim is amazing as is this trampoline thing to watch. The basketball was great last night (1130AM PT to 130!) as a real blowout. At least we’ve now proven that $200M worth of players can beat anyone in the world
| Gymnastics | 9 |
| Diving | 7 |
| Weightlifting | 8 |
| Shooting | 5 |
| Table Tennis | 5 |
| Badminton | 3 |
| Judo | 3 |
| Boxing | 2 |
| Trampoline | 2 |
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Music Galore
2008
06.25
06.25
Spent a day thinking about nothing but music in the US. Strange to just have a meeting about music in China and then go directly to the US. Interesting sites:
* “lala.com”:http://lala.com. Spirit of full disclosure we are investors, but what the heck kind of cool
* “nutsie.com”:http://nutsie.com. Ditto
* “Pandora”:http://pandora.com. I haven’t played with it in a while. Same basic idea. Experts categorize music and then you create stations based on a single song or artist. Kind of neat. Good way to explore (vs. by recommendations which La La and Nutsie do). Nice user interface.
Cool new artists (no account for my tastes):
* “John Mayer’s Say”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZ0z86LmXBM . OK, he may be dating Jennifer Aniston (who hasn’t gone out with her???), but the song is pretty cool.
* “Kat DeLuna”:http://www.pandora.com/music/artist/kat+deluna and 9 Lives. Discovered by a choice from Cassie’s Me & U, some great tracks like “Whine Up”:http://www.nutsie.com/song/Whine%20Up/4631672 and I have to say the Nutsie search for Youtube for the video is hilarious and intercuts a kid video with a movie “Feel The Noise”:http://www.lala.com/#album/504684633539399264/.
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China Disaster Relief
2008
05.28
05.28
We’ve been trying to efficiently donate as a group to help all those poor folks in China. Our Chinese affiliate, “Qiming”:http://qimingventures.com is giving through the Chinese Red Cross, but if you are out of China, what are your options? We just want something simple that takes a credit card.
First, “Charity Navigator”:http://charitynavigator.com came up from Google:”non profit rating” as the top source. The main things are to make sure that the agency is legitimate and also to see their efficiency ratio. That is how much of your dollar actually goes to the cause. it can be remarkably low. “GuideStar”:http://guidestar.org doesn’t do an actual rating, but does have lots of the raw data in terms of IRS forms and so forth. You can subscribe to premium services to see their reports as well.
They have some great “Top Ten”:http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=topten lists that you can look at. For instance “high salary CEOs at low rated charities”:http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=topten.detail&listid=8
The obvious one, “Red Cross”:http://american.redcross.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ntld_china_relief_fund_0508 has its own China relief fund. It is a pretty decent. They have four stars which their top rating. The main things are that it is quite efficient (94% of its dollars go to programs)
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Phone Rates to China
2008
04.23
04.23
It is amazing how rates have really fallen. Now with AT&T, calling a mobile number in China is $0.16 a minute. With “GlobalPhone”:https://www.gphone.com/myaccount/multirates.asp?glo=globalphone&aid2=GH15 as a low cost check, it is 7.6 cents per minute. That is 1 cent a minute to call a local access number (7038522111) and then 6.6 cents to call China. Wow, Skype is still the cheapest but lowest quality, but that’s pretty amazing!