I frequently travel through Hong Kong and use it as a hub when visiting other Asian countries. One of the things that I like about Hong Kong International Airport is that they offer free WiFi and they also have a Caviar House & Prunier that I frequent during stopovers.

Recently, while exiting the plane, I encountered an error while trying to connect to the free wireless sytem at the airport. It didn’t become apparent that this was an issue with my iPhone 4 running iOS5 until I later opened my laptop and was able to connect.

At Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) you can connect to either to the #HKAirport Free… the PCCW or the PCCW1x (using username: pccw and password:pccw) access points for free access.

The error I encountered was:

Sysetm is busy. Please try to restart your browser and try again.
[Page Not Found - /MsgPage/error.htmlerror id=119134].

I later realized that the issue dealt with my iPhone’s ability to accept cookies, thus resolving the issue. Read more about how to fix this issue, after the jump.

On the iPhone running iOS5, simply go to Settings and then navigate to Safari:

Choose the Accept Cookies option and change the option from Never to another option, depending on how sensitive you are to cookies tracking your browsing activity.

After making the requisite changes (above), I was able to connect without an issue.

Sidenote: PCCW’s 802.1x service is a really awesome feature – you no longer need to worry about people snooping in on your internet access via WiFi sniffing. From my understanding, it’s the only airport in the world right now that offers this service.

A couple years ago, I chanced upon the opportunity to meet the then President of Sohu.com, one of China’s most prolific search engines, Victor Koo, at the ETRE (European Technology Roundtable and Exhibition) Conference.

Recently, I read reports on Poynter that Google recently apologized for borrowing stealing it’s competitor’s database and using it in one of their search tools.

You can find out more about the story, HERE.

Victor has since left Sohu to pursue other (likely awesome) endeavours (find out more HERE). I recall his wife, Helen Qin, formerly the Managing Director for Dow Jones in China, was looking to go back to school at NYU in sports management given her interest to bring the NBA to China.

The release from Google (translated into English.. original HERE):

Google on Google and other Sohu users to input an apology

04/09/2007 11:24:00 morning.
Issued : Google (Google), a public relations spokesman

Google Pinyin input method in the laboratory release (April 4, 2007), We have received a lot of user feedback and suggestions particular, we note that the Google input thesaurus questioned In the pilot phase of the thesaurus does contain some non-Google data sources. We are willing to face up to their problems, such as Sohu said it apologized to customers.

Meanwhile, we immediately took action this week (April 8, 2007) at noon, We have completed a Google Pinyin input method releases the second update (version 1.0.17.0 input Google) spent two days to complete the re-escalation of a comprehensive thesaurus. Google thesaurus from the massive searchable database accumulated over the years produced tens of millions of entries. We welcome our customers with upgraded versions of the industry’s supervision.

Google itself, but also hopes to work with the industry to work together to improve the overall escalation of input methods, functional breakthrough in the long term. pragmatic and substantive work continuously to provide users with more and better application experience.

Finally, again indicated to the users, Sohu and other apology!

Translated via Google’s own translation tool HERE.