Tongfamily Website

Here are some cute Chinese nicknames of Athletes http://www.nba.com/features/chinese_playenicknames_070329.html

Forget Apple TV, Stream to Your Xbox or PS3:
If you’ve already got an Xbox 360 or PS3 (who doesn’t?) there’s no
reason to bother with another media streamer, even if you’re ditching
Windows. The programs Connect 360 and Rivet will stream music, movies and photos from your Mac to your Xbox for $20. For the PS3, there’s MediaLink,
from the guys who make Connect 360, which does pretty much the same
deal, but with slightly better integration with iTunes and iPhoto. The P2P app Vuze—which
is free—also streams videos to Xbox 360 and PS3 from any OS it
runs on, but obviously it’s a little less feature-rich.

10.5: Set up Time Machine on a NAS in three easy steps – Mac OS X Hints

Here’s a three-step process to create a Time Machine backup on a network-attached storage (NAS) unit.

1. Create a sparsebundle image on your local system.
2. Create and set permissions on your network share.
3. Copy the sparsebundle to the network share root.

First, when you use Time Machine with a SMB disk, it creates a .sparsebundle disk image to put the backup data into. The disk image has a capacity of 2.75 TB. Since my SMB disk has only 1.5 TB of capacity, the disk image shows that 1.25TB is used and 1.5TB is available. The trick is to create another sparsebundle disk image of a given capacity (I used 300GB) on the SMB disk. Use ‘Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled)’ as the volume format in Disk Utility. Name the volume the same as the volume used by Time Machine (it should be Backup of computerName), and save it to something like test.sparsebundle.

you want to convert the .flac files to .mp3 to take with you on your
iPod or MP3 player. This tutorial will walk you through the steps to do
just that, using OS X. Read on ..

First things first, make sure you’ve downloaded and installed xACT and iTunes, both of which are free.
Actually it turns out that MAX does this directly. Takes a FLAC file and converts it to an MP3.

Previously mentioned
Songbird, the open source, Mozilla-powered, supposedly iTunes-killing
media player has updated to 1.4.2, bringing a host of new features,
including AAC metadata support, a new feather (skin), CD ripping, and
support for many mass storage devices.

Apart from the
snazzy new purple feather, the biggest features in this release are
definitely CD ripping and mass storage syncing (both available as
add-ons for 1.4.2 by the Songbird team). The CD ripping tool can look
up metadata information on Gracenote (or other services if you prefer,
via other add-ons) and can rip songs as FLAC, OGG, or, if you’re using
Windows, as WMA as well. In addition, Songbird can now sync to more
than just iPods—you can now sync any MSC (Mass Storage Class)
device, as well as manage firmware on certain devices. Both CD ripping
and MSC support, though, are currently only available for Windows
users—Linux and Mac users will have to wait until at least the
next release to test them out. Download Songbird.

Ever since the release of Apple’s multi-touch Magic Mouse
just a few months ago, one of the primary complaints from users has
been a lack of support for Exposé and other functionalities
given the limited options available in System Preferences for
configuring the mouse.

Addressing these issues, Gizmodo today points to a new menu bar application, MagicPrefs, that greatly expands the customizability of the Magic Mouse.

See Final Mac Ripping Workflow | Tongfamily Website as it is still the best way to get a high quality MP3 encoding on your Mac. You basically use a free tool called iTunes-LAME instead of iTunes itself and then you use two widgets Harmonic to find lyrics and Amazon Art Finder to find album art. The main problem is that Harmonic seems to fail much more at finding lyrics now. Don’t know why. And Amazon Art finder now costs $15 :(

I also us nlyric, but this really only works well when I’m in China. The servers must be closer :)

Softonic has a list of free ones with Lyrics Via LyricWiki 2.3 (discontinued) and
Album Artwork Assistant 2.5 being the most downloaded. The Album Artwork Assistant is a real app that basically is doing google image searches for you. So it works more quickly than scrolling through each song.

This would solve a huge number of problems. Get a box that gives you 3G in your home. Amazing that AT&T wants us to pay for it, but its the only game in town with the iPhone right now ;-(

AT&T 3G MicroCell™

AT&T 3G MicroCell acts like a mini cellular tower in your home or small business environment. It connects to AT&T’s network via your existing broadband Internet service (such as DSL or cable) and is designed to support up to four simultaneous users in a home or small business setting. With AT&T 3G MicroCell, you receive improved cellular signal performance for both voice calls and cellular data applications like picture messaging and surfing the Web.

Lifehacker has put together their list of the 15 Most Popular Free Mac Apps of 2009. Keep in mind, these are Mac OS X apps, not iPhone apps. The list is based on the popularity of apps they’ve covered in 2009 and don’t represent total download numbers.

Here are some of their choices (in no specific order):

• Magnifique
  
• Picasa for Mac
• Pollux. Wow I use Tritag, but this coule be the answer for tagging mp3s. Sad thing is no download nows
  
• doubleTwist
  
• Thunderbird
  
• Google Chrome
  
• PwnageTool/QuickPwn
• Namebench
• Quicksilver
• Glims
  

AppleInsider | Apple offers free taste of iTunes LP format with ‘Holiday Sampler’

Apple is promoting its new iTunes LP format with a free downloadable selection of 20 holiday songs from a variety of popular artists.

The free iTunes Holiday Sampler download includes a variety of artists from wide-ranging genres, such as Toby Keith, Weezer, Glasvegas, Barry Manilow, and comedian Stephen Colbert. The iTunes LP collects the songs from a variety of albums and compilations, with Christmas classics such as “The First Noel,” “Silent Night, “Twelve Days of Christmas, and “O Holy Night.”