I have a little light tent just like that and it works great. However, that's not the source of your yellow cast. The yellow was most likely caused by using a tungsten light source, or a lesser possibly is that it was induced by whatever fabric you used for diffusing the light. If you use the same the light source, you'll have the same color issue with this tent. There are ways of color-correcting for tungsten; the easiest way is that your camera probably has a tungsten light setting, or you can set a custom white balance. However, your better bet is to use a better source of light. Even then, you should still learn how to use custom white balance for best results.
You can use continuous light (as in your desk lamp idea), or you can use flashes. Either way, one of them really isn't sufficient for product photography like this. I would plan on using two or three lights -- one on either side, and maybe another one directly over the box. Your best lights will come using flashes. But that's expensive and may be a bit complicated for your needs. The second-best way is to use cheap clamp-on light sockets with reflectors, and daylight corrected (5000K) compact fluorescent lights (CFLs).
These fixtures are around $6 each and work great. Obviously, you'll need to build some sort of stand over the box to clamp the lights on.
Best sure to use Daylight bulbs. That's very important. Something like these will do you.
16-Watt (65W) R30 Daylight CFL Light Bulbs (2-Pack)-ES5R316250K at The Home Depot
If you go with CFLs, you'll want to use a slow shutter speed. (The reason is that fluorescent lights actually blink like strobe lights very rapidly. By using a long shutterspeed, you'll be shooting through at least one full cycle of the light. Otherwise, your shot may contain just some random portion of the blink sine wave and you'll get inconsistent results.) Low ISO and a small aperture will allow you to achieve that slow shutterspeed. You want it to be less than 1/60s. Also use a tripod, that's essential for best results.
If you use flash, you can use a faster shutterspeed and most likely even hand-hold your shots and still get good results. However, not everyone owns and knows how to use multiple off-camera flashes. It's not hard actually, and I can go further into it if you want.
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