Free wifi in Fukuoka (Japan) and Seoul (South Korea)

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Major Update concerning Fukuoka (19/05/2012):
It seems that Fukuoka has now implemented several free wifi zones under the name "Fukuoka City Wifi". This started 26/04. I have no information of how stable or how fast it is. For more information, you can try this link but it is in Japanese only: http://www.city.fukuoka.lg.jp/wi-fi/.


I have just returned from a 2 week trip to Fukuoka and Seoul and wanted to share the results of my hunt for free wifi in those cities.

Seoul:

I stayed only 2-3 days in Seoul and it was a last minute thing so I did not prepare anything. Knowing that South Korea is really big in terms of smart phones, Internet gaming and so on, I was really expecting to find wifi spot easily. I could not have been more wrong. All Wifi spots I found were protected by a wpa2 key and I then decided to go to the Starbucks coffee of Myong-Dong, expecting to find a free wifi spot there. On the front door, I could see something like "free Internet here", inside, I could see a lot of people with smart phones and tablets but again this was false hope. The wifi spot was depending on you having an Internet subscription with some local mobile provider and both Starbucks staff I asked told me there was no wifi. A wifi provider was even clever enough to call its wifi spot something-Starbucks so that most people thinking a free wifi spot would be available would connect to it, and may eventually have paid for the Internet (this wifi spot was not free and was not managed by Starbucks). I decided to try McDonald but before I reached it, something I had to do in real life showed up and I had to give up my hunt of free wifi in Seoul.

Fukuoka:

I stayed about 10 days in Fukuoka. I had looked on the Internet beforehand for info about free wifi spots but found only 2 locations in Tenjin: tenjin chikagai and Seattle Best Coffee.
Not living near Tenjin, I tried again to find a free wifi spot by myself first and found out that Softbank (a Japanese mobile provider) had wifi spots in many places (Starbucks, fast-food, ...) but that you needed a subscription with them in order to use one of those wifi spots. They are all named FON and your mobile phone will connect to them instantly if you have the wifi on (you don't need to select them or choose to connect to them). However, as I just said, you won't be able to surf on the Internet, unless you have a subscription with Softbank. 

(the sign says "Wifi available" but you have to notice the small SoftBank icon at the bottom of it, meaning it is only for Softbank customers)

(the page you will get if you try to surf on the internet after being connected to this wifi, which basically means "only for SoftBank customers")
Next step in my hunt was Seattle Best Coffee. Unfortunately, this shop is now closed and does not seem to reopen anytime soon (the reason may be that Starbucks opened a shop just next to it).
All in all, my last hope was the Tenjin Chikagai (underground shopping area just next to the Tenjin station). There was effectively a free wifi there (select the tenchika wifi, not the FON one) but as people mentioned in some forum, there is no bench. So you either have to stand up while surfing, sit down on the floor or find a coffee shop. You will find several ones in this area, including a Starbucks.

You will also have to deal with another problem: this wifi is a bit slow. Probably ok if you are used to it but personally I just had to give up. Pages were too slow to load and this was for normal web browsing, I just cannot imagine watching some YouTube videos there. This was the end of my free wifi spot hunt, too much hassle, too slow connections, not enough updated information about where to find them, ...

I ended up in an Internet coffee and for those who are interested, you can find it at the exit 13 of the Tenjin station, just next to a karaoke.

The place is a but outdated (keyboard where not all letters are visible) but cheap enough for me. I spent about 1 hour there and only had to spend 380 yens, the equivalent of the coffee I had in the Starbucks of chikagai.

There are free drinks on the third floor (free drinks are common in Internet cafes in Japan), so all in all, I think it is a good option. I have also seen a lot of ads about the popeye Internet cafes. They look nice and new but I did not try them myself.

Jack Tramiel is dead

Jack Tramiel passed away on Sunday, 08/04/2012. This is a little news that you may have missed. In case you wonder, he was the man said to be behind the commodore 64 and in case you still wonder, the commodore 64 was one of the first computer for personal use and a big hit at that time. On a side note, it was also my first computer. If you think about Steve Jobs as a pioneer (which I think he was), please also think about Jack Tramiel as one. He did think about the computer as something people would be able to use for private purposes at a time people thought of them only on a research perspective. Without Steve Jobs, no tablets ? Well, without Jack Tramiel we may not have had personal computers either (please note this is just a comparison, I do believe that both computers and tablets would have come to the private market, even without those two persons).
And for the nostalgics of the commodore 64, please note that this computer has made his comeback: http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_C64.aspx (this is old news, but you may have missed it too)

About mobile phones screen/display

Have you had an issue with a phone who fell down and whose screen got completely broken ? Or maybe a friend of yours has ? Or maybe it wasn't a phone, maybe it was a tablet...

Somehow, it happened to me quite recently (HP desire HD) and I am surprised about a couple of things:
- how fragile the screens are
- how bad the insurances are
- how bad this is covered in blogs, news, and so on

- How fragile the screens are:

My phone fell down from my sofa. I was sitting. So the fell was really not from a high altitude. I did not smash it to the ground and I really did not expect it to break. I made some previous phones fall from higher or while running and so on. Never had been an issue. The novelty ? Touch screen !!! It seems to be the excuse to have fragile screens. Or is this a hidden marketing to force people to buy new phones ?

- How bad the insurances are:

So soon the screen is broken, will the insurances refuse to pay anything. That is clever from them but I find it a bit too good for them. I am wondering if a customer-protection company will someday do something about it...

- How bad this is covered in blogs, news and so on

Finally something interesting for me. Because that means I can write something that may help you in the choice of your next mobile phone. When I lost my HTC desire HD, I needed a new phone. But I did not want to do the same mistake and buy a phone with an easy-to-break screen. So I looked. Mobile-phone comparison websites, technical specifications, ... nothing. Not a damn thing about how hard or soft the screen is.

Let's see for example this page:

http://europe.nokia.com/find-products/devices/nokia-n8/specifications

It speaks about the screen of the phone: size, amoled, ... but nothing about resistance of the screen.

So you will probably think: "oh, every phones must be the same, then". And this is where my blog is helpful, no, every phones are not the same. The strange thing is that this has been forgotten in the specifications. Nobody speaks about it but it is there.

There are 2 types of resistant glass on the market that can be used for mobile phones: the gorilla glass and dragontrail. Please feel free to google them, a lot of information is available on these glass (you just had to know the names). Here for example, some quite convincing video/article:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVxj6gRYwS0

http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/gorilla-glass-has-a-new-competitor-called-dragontrail-20110120/

So, where to find them ? The dragontrail is not yet in the market as far as I know and will more target tablets. As it goes for gorilla glass, nokia N8 and samsung galaxy SII are two examples of mobile phones using it. The full list is available here:

http://www.corninggorillaglass.com/featured-products

The only remaining question is when will we have this kind of info included in the technical description of smartphones/tablets/PC... :) ?

Android problem when changing timezone

This is a quite awkward bug from Android. Actually, I could not believe there was such an obvious issue to change time zone...

When you change the timezone of your phone, the time displayed when you start your mobile and the time on the upper right corner of your home should display the new time correctly (I even had problems with that but a restart of the phone fixed it and it may have been fixed in 2.3 as I did not manage to reproduce the issue).

HOWEVER the main clock on your home page will still show the previous time no matter what ! You can try whatever settings you want, it will not change !

The solution ? Very ugly for people travelling a lot but well, not my fault... you need to remove the clock widget and add it again. Click on the clock for a long time (2-3 seconds) and move it to the bin (should be on the lower part of the screen). Then go to "Personalize" (there sould be a link per default), then "Widget", then "Clock". Choose the Clock you want (the default one takes a lot of space on the screen in my opinion) and the "new" Clock should display the time in your timezone... Problem "solved".

"Turn on Internet connection sharing" option missing

Latest update: 31.03.2013: got fed up with this issue and bought a wireless router: http://smallittips.blogspot.com/2013/03/getting-wireless-router.html
Update before that: 30.05.2012 (made it easier to read)

Generally, the first time you share your internet on an ad-hoc connection, everything goes fine. But after that, the "internet connection sharing" option disappears. Impossible to find it. Impossible to share your internet connection again... it is linked to the first ad hoc network you have created and won't be available unless you remove your first-in-your-life-created ad hoc network. The problem is quite tricky as this ad-hoc network is not shown anywhere and restarting your PC will not help.

Here is my solution:
1) Go to your network settings: "Control Panel" / "Network and Sharing Center" and click on "Change adapter settings" (should be called "Manage your internet connections" in my opinion)

2) You should see 2 important connections here:
- your local connection (the one that enables you to connect to the internet). It is probably in state "Network, Shared".
- your wireless connection (the one you will be using to give internet access to your other devices)
You may have other connections but they are not important here. You will NOT have ad hoc connections

3) Right click on your local connection and go to Properties. There should be a tab called "Sharing" which is activated. Disable it (uncheck the first option "Allow other...").

4) Disable your wireless connection.

5) Re-enable your wireless connection. As you have unchecked the sharing, when your wireless connection is re-enabled it should not use the internet-sharing-unique-slot

6) Re-create an ad-hoc connection. The option "Turn on Internet connection sharing" should now appear correctly.

If this is not the case, double check that:
- you have re-enabled your wireless connection and that your wireless connection is up (wifi button red, ...)
- you have followed the steps properly. Particularly the order of the steps is important

How to use your PC internet connection from another device

Hi guys !

This will be the first post of my IT-related blog. I have always wanted to avoid blogging about IT subjects as this is too close to my real job (I am an IT guy, even if this is a quite vast definition). I would rather blog about travels, restaurants, and so on. But something get me started is a stupid "bug" that windows have and I really wanted to share how I solved it (I found it difficult to find a proper explanation on the internet).

So, here is the scenario:
- you have a PC (which has support for wifi, most have nowadays)
- your PC is connected to the internet with something else than wifi (generally an ethernet cable to an internet box)
- you want to use this internet connection for your newly bought ipad/iphone/android tablet/android phone or simply another PC (your friend visiting you, your girlfriend stopping by, ...).

The solution is quite easy (except for the nasty bug described in part 2). All you need to do is tell your PC to create a WIFI zone and that this wifi zone will have access to your internet access:

1) Activate your wifi connection on your PC (you generally have to go through device manager if it was previously disabled there) and may have a small button to press on your PC. Don't connect to any wifi zone, this step is just to ensure your wifi is ready to use for your PC.

2) Go to your network settings (on windows 7: Start/"Control Panel"/"Network and Internet"/"Network and Sharing Center") and click on "Set up a new connection or network"

4) Go to the bottom of the list and select "Set up a wireless ad hoc (computer-to-computer) network". If this option does not appear, your wifi is probably not activated, go back to 1). Also, don't think too much about "computer-to-computer"; in this case, your phone/tablet/... will be considered as a computer.

5) Click "Next" several times, choose a wifi zone name (does not really matter, just a reference to know what to connect to from your tablet/iphone/...).

6) For the security type, I have had problems with WPA2-Personal and ipad, so I recommend WEP (no security means anyone can use your connection... may be a bit scary...). For the security key, just use something simple to remember for you, time to set up the connection on your ipad/iphone/... Don't bother saving the network it won't appear anyway (beginning of the lovely windows bug here).

7) Click Next and click on "Turn on Internet connection sharing". If this option does not appear, please have a look at my next post on this site, I explain the main reason it can happen and how to solve it.

8) Your Wifi zone should now be created and sharing your internet connection. On your ipad/iphone/computer, connects to your wifi zone and enjoy your internet connection :)