Our favorite feature of Opera 10

Why do we pick Opera?

- Speed, of course
Despite there are tests that Opera drains the battery quicker than IE/Firefox/Chrome (it does beat Safari), Opera has a bliztering speed of loading webpages. Good stuff.

- Recovery of closed tabs
Sometimes, we accidentally close a tab. True, there is a function and a hotkey for Firefox, but Opera's list is way more comprehensive.

- Opera Turbo
Opera Turbo is good theroetically, however, when you are really in need of it, chances are you are in your company or school, behind layers of proxy servers and firewalls. Using Turbo might hinder your browsing experience in this case.

- Mouse Gesture
U+D = Reload, we've been spoiled by Opera so much that even when we were using Firefox, we still need to install a gesture extension. Gesture is essential.

- Page Source Tweaking
Now, our favorite feature desired for some time.  Modifying a page doesn't necessarily need Grease Monkey for Firefox any more!  (Note: we are not hacking, we are modifying local data stored in the cached memory of our local machine without infringing intellectual properties) Edit and Save is useful not only to trick your friends, you can even bypass the unnecessary wait for downloading the file on file hosting site.

When we attempt to download certain resource from the file hosts, like this, Rapidshare, we usually need land on a pay-or-wait page, like this:

Now when we want to load faster, we modify the source code a bit.  To do this, open the file source (Ctrl+U), and you should be seeing lots of codes.  Don't panic.  For example, in Rapidshare, it uses a countdown script to slow down the download of free users.  In this page, we can search for the word "remaining" because it is mentioned in the waiting message.  Once we located the line, we find "c=c-1" on the next line.  This means a value "c" is decreasing gradually, in a unit-by-unit rate.

Changing c=c-1 to c=c-10 will make the countdown process ten times faster!  Remember to click "Save" on the top.  Just by we save the modification, the clock goes uber fast:

No, sorry to disillusion you, it's not porn, it's just a Radio upgrade for the HTC Hero.

We can use this for surprising friends too!  Changing Google.com to gOOgle.com does not make things special, but everyone has his/her own mischievous thoughts :)

 

Opera 10 can be downloaded directly on Opera's official site. (click here for the Opera Download page)

For More portability, Opera@USB enables you to stuff all files necessary for Opera in a USB stick. 

Order status from ComputerUniverse

Remember we have ordered two HTC Heroes (White and Silver) from the German online store ComputerUniverse.net last month? (Click here for the article) Once we received the items, we have been playing with it, and unaware about the promised feedback on the order. Thanks to our reader, Rykel, for his kind reminder.

We heard about this company from a user from Hong Kong, and heard that the company ships quite fast. So when Expansys had its absurd price increase after we placed the order, we quickly turned to Computer Universe.

Price: At the time of purchase, it’s 20% cheaper than the market price in Hong Kong. At the time of arrival, it’s around 5% cheaper. Can’t ask for more when the official launch here in Hong Kong is 1.5 months later, on 19 September.

Delivery time: Upon payment, we quickly get a track code on 6 August. With the track code we were able to trace the item with impatience on DHL Germany site. On ComputerUniverse’s side, they do ship quickly, as reflected on the track time on DHL post. It took seven calendar days for the parcel to arrive Hong Kong (13 August), plus one day for the Hong Kong Post to deliver (14 August). Eight days is a pretty standard time for normal air mail.

Package protection: The package we received is well wrapped carton box. The box is a bit large to store the two HTC Hero machines, but there were enough paper ribbons for adequate shock protection. So, when we receive the package, the two boxes are undamaged.

Product: Standard package in Germany, just like the unboxing videos on YouTube, with handset, battery, back cover, adaptor, 2G Micro-SD card with backgrounds and MP3 and driver, 3.5mm hands-free, USB-ext cable, USB adaptor, printed matters. So it is incompatible with the UK plug using in Hong Kong. Fortunately an USB charger is easy to come by, just beware that the lower Ampere ones cannot fully charge the Hero.

Overall: All in all, a hassle-free experience. As simple as shop-checkout-shipping. Reasonable priced and good delivery. Definitely would recommend buying from them.

Product search

Note: computeruniverse.net = computeruniverse.de

Note 2: quote the coupon code (voucher code) for €5 off your purchase: FW8TY5K

Monopoly City Streets

Monopoly City Streets is obviously launched by Hasbro, the current owner of the Monopoly brand. The aim of the game is to beat every other player when the global game ends on 31 January 2010.  The player with the most wealth in cash and properties wins the game.  The basic concept is login, collect rent, buy streets, build properties, and of course, rinse and repeat.

When the game first launched, massive lag was experienced on their remote servers. Many interested players with a weaker connection in a very bad initial position – when they were finally able to connect to the game, the desired street was already developed.  

Unfortunately, we, among many other players worldwide, were affected.  Once we successfully connected to the game, all streets in Hong Kong were literally unavailable.  We couldn’t complain as Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated cities in the world (Read the last paragraph below if interested.

Started slowly, we were able to start quickly to our business in an M1,000,000 road somewhere in the US.  Back in the days, all expensive streets were M1,000,000 each, and they have 100% daily return for Green House, the cheapest housing.  Users will have to log in every day to collect the returns.

And according to the official blog, to combat the cheaters (they referred as “compromised data”), fix the bugs and to smash their sloooow servers, they have reset the game.  That meant all investments and moneys were confiscated.  Once we log in back, our streets in Europe were fully occupied.  This is certainly not encouraging.  We quitted after the reset.

 Here’s our tips on strategy:

• Buy the expensive streets, an M1,000,000 street has 100% return on Green House, an M800,000 one has 80% only.

• Build the building with highest return rate for maximizing income.  Don’t build those expensive ones, they have really poor return.  Recommended buildings are M50,000 and M75,000 (100% standard return), and M300,000 and M500,000 (95% standard return)

• Build more than one bonus building in each of your expensive streets.  Protected streets cannot be demolished, but the protective buildings can be demolished.  Players will take more cards to deal with these streets, thus making them hesitate to harass you.

• If you need more chance cards (thus more bonus buildings), build those cheap and small Green Houses.  Chance cards may pop out randomly when you are building.  Quantity of buildings, instead of money, mattered here.

• If you can’t build the big houses on a street any more, squeeze in Green Houses.  Green House can fit in between some big buildings with ease.

• If you don’t have the time, don’t play – as money doubles each day (plus the daily login bonus of M1,000,000, the build time and play time doubles each day.  After playing for a week you should have around 0.1 to 0.2 billion M in the bank.  This might mean more than 2 hours to play time each day.  Remember, it might sound fascinating to own a street, even in the virtual world, but after all, you're wasting your time.

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End of content about the game, now a little fact on the population problem:

Guinness World Records has the Mong Kok district in Hong Kong as most densely populated in the world (Wiki reference) – more than 130,000 people are living in one square kilometer.  Oh, did we mention that the figure is already “reduced” due to reclamation of lands?

And sorry, we cannot imagine how much the rich people are paying for a square feet (30 x 30cm) in a prison-like 80-storey apartment in this overcrowded city.  $10,000, in US dollars, not Hong Kong dollars.

 

SDHC class classification myth

Out of curiosity, we just checked with the write speed some of our Micro SD cards:

1) Transcend Micro SDHC, 8G, Class 6: 9.1MB
2) Sandisk Micro SDHC, 8G, Class 4: 14.9MB

The Sandisk card came with a tiny red reader (Like this), bought in Hong Kong

The speed test was carried out using the Sandisk reader in conjuction with the card benchmark software called "ATTO". The test was carried out in the same computer. Same test is done twice with different sequences to ensure data consistency.

(Results photos are coming soon) As the results showed, the "Class 4" Sandisk card performed far better than the Transcend's "Class 6" counterpart.

By definition, a Class 4 card should constantly have a write speed of 4MB/sec, and Class 6 card, 6MB/sec. Sandisk did a very well job on this.

To our surprise, the read/write speed of this tiny reader is, amazingly, faster than most of the internal card readers in our machines.