Travel raj

Travel

What’s your Japanese name, b*tch!?

Facebook is always full of little localization/location-sensitive tricks. I started to take notice a few years ago on a trip to Mexico when I was asked if I’d like to change my language to Spanish. At the time, it appeared that facebook used Geotargeting to figure out where in the world you were. They still do this and also have an arsenal of methodologies they test to make it easier for people to connect to you.

What’s your Japanese name?

One of the languages I’ve put on my facebook profile is Nihongo, or Japanese. This prompted facebook to ask me if I had a Japanese name, which undoubtedly would make it easier for Japanese users to connect with me on facebook, if I were of Japanese descent.

One-time use QR codes

On a recent trip to Japan, I noticed several things popped up in the sidebar while communicating on facebook. One of the things that stuck out was a one-time QR code that allowed me to log in on my Japanese mobile phone

What Train Station is nearest to you?

On that same recent trip, after changing my current home location to Tokyo, Japan, facebook asked what train station was closest to me.

Facebook Asks: What's your Train Station

Questions about residence

Facebook is also curious about where you live. Especially for serving up ads. Again, while traveling, I noted that facebook asked me where I lived in order for them to serve up ads relevant to me. ‘Have you moved to Singapore?’ is what came up last time I opened up facebook in China – I was using a proxy server in Singapore to bypass the Great Firewall of China.

So why is this all important? facebook is already looking to the future – where the bulk of Internet users will not be in North America and likely won’t even speak English. As it stands, more that 75% of users are outside the United States.

Find out more on facebook’s own statistics page, HERE.

aside 2 Nov

Hong Kong International Airport Wifi Issue

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.

Getting a System is busy. Please try to restart your browser and try again error at HKIA

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.

Getting a System is busy. Please try to restart your browser and try again error at HKIA

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.
[read more…]

aside 30 Jul

Vancouver City Council Off the Deep End?!

Okay. We got bike lanes. We got chicken coops. Now, with Vancouver’s City Council’s help, organized labour can prevail over the evil ruling overlords.

‎”We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions.” –Adolf Hitler

I’m talking about Rocky Mountaineer Railtours (RMR) here. It’s a small, 100 man operation that is one of the gems of BC’s Tourism Sector. In February, the on-board attendants changed their union from the Canadian Auto Workers’ Union to the Teamsters (Local 13 – sidenote: anyone find Jimmy Hoffa yet?), which was mostly seen as a move to muscle more out of RMR for the workers (yay).

That’s fine and said but then fast forward to June, a couple weeks after RMR’s owner, Peter Armstrong, announced that he was going to Chair Vancouver’s Non-Partisan Association (NPA), things really went haywire.

First Teamsters Local 13 advised RMR of their intent to strike (uh oh!). Then RMR locked them out and hired replacement workers (double uh oh!).

Apparently by all reports, things are going alright onboard RMR’s trips right now. Customers are satisfied and RMR is having an okay high season minus the slanderous remarks and fake reviews being posted online regarding the company.

Anyhow, that’s not where things get weird. This is:

(click the image or the link HERE to view the original letter in full or keep reading)
[read more…]

aside 17 May

Facebook in Japan

It’s interesting to travel and use facebook from foreign places. In China and Vietnam, for example, in most cases you’ll be blocked by the Government’s firewall and then you’ll be subjected to use a VPN or some other access technique to get onto facebook. In other places, facebook delivers localized tools or design.

On a recent trip to Vietnam, I was forced to use a VPN that I set up in Singapore. It was interesting to see that facebook asked me (in the sidebar) straight up if I was in Singapore, if I was visiting Singapore or a permanent resident.

On my most recent trip to Japan, more neatness. Facebook makes it easy for Japanese users to log into their site with a disposable autologin QR code as seen below.

Use Facebook on your mobile phone

We’ve been working hard to make Facebook Mobile usable in Japan. There is still a long way to go but most of the basic functionality is there. Please check it out and let us know what you think.

Facebook Mobile is helpful for keeping up with your friends when you’re on the go.

Read the “auto .ogin QR code” with your mobile phone.

http://m.facebook.com

Do not share this QR code with anyone else – it is personalized to log you in automatically. For your protection, the QR code can be used only once and expires after 24 hours.

Click the image (above) for the fullsize screenshot.

aside 2 Sep

The French hate us!

Actually, well, more like iDTGV hates us and by us, I mean Canadians.

For those that don’t know, iDTGV (not affiliated with TGV) is a train service in France that I keep calling iDTVG for some reason. Seriously, though, iDTGV is an interesting train service because it caters to my demographic – you know, the one that doesn’t appreciate screaming freaking kids running amok while you’re trying to enjoy some quiet time, a baguette and maybe a bottle of wine en route to Nice from Paris. They have train cars that cater to a number of needs – iDzen for the traveller who may want to chill out or sleep, iDzap which has a jovial and engaging atmosphere, a bar that feels more like a real bar / cafe and iDNiGHT which is the overnight dance party train with DJ and liquor service.

Pretty cool huh?

Sadly, on a recent trip to France, I wasn’t able to actually experience iDTGV. You see, despite booking some reasonable tickets online and being assured everything is copasetic, hours later, the system would tell me that my credit card has been refused. After what seemed like hours on the phone to my credit card company, they noted that no authorization was attempted, so I was like WTF?!

After trying to reach the company, pacing around, trying every credit card in my arsenal, losing my reservation and the likes, I took it upon myself to visit a train station that purports to have an iDTGV booth. Guess what…. it was a freaking Internet kiosk with no people in sight! After making several enquiries, I was told that in most cases, there are no iDTGV staff at train stations except to manage departures. GREAT!

BTW – while I was out on my escapade, and thanks to SFR’s 3G+ internet service, I received the following reply from iDTGV:

From: Service Clients iDTGV [mailto:reclamation@idtgv.com]
Sent: Thursday, August 06, 2009 5:51 AM
To: Rajesh Taneja
Subject: <Ref3688321> Question sur le paiement

Dear Sir Taneja,

We acknowledge receipt of your message on the payment of your order.

Please note that for security reasons you can only pay by credit card French, European or American.

We remain at your disposal for any additional information you consider useful.

Best regards
Nadège
Service Clients
Une question sur iDTGV ? Consultez la rubrique « Besoin d’aide » de notre site !
www.idtgv.com
Du lundi au vendredi
de 09H00 à 18h00
(sauf jours fériés)

<rant>So what? In France, Canadians are chopped liver? What about Vimy Ridge, Juno Beach, Operation Overlord and the Battle of Normandy? Haven’t we paid our dues? If it weren’t for the Canadians’ presence in France, I suspect that Nadège might’ve been Wilhelm and French would be an elective in secondary school.</rant>

After the whole excercise, we wound up at the SNCF booth and booked to be on a TGV train to Cannes the following day, screaming children in tow *sigh*.

aside 23 Jul

Cool fire spinning photos

During my trip to Calgary for the Stampede, my friends and I chanced upon some fire spinning taking place on the corner of 17th Avenue SW and 8th Street in Mount Royal. Here’s some cool fire spinning photos:

Makes me want to head to burning man or something like that!

aside 24 Feb

Rogers Wireless Blackberry in Japan

After about two months of trying, success! We finally have liftoff, Houston, or more importantly, we’ve been able to get a Blackberry (attached to our corporate BES) going in Japan.

Background: SSID here in Canada operates numerous communication networks for mobile devices ranging from the ultra-secure Exchange/ActiveSync over the air with SSL and IP tunnelling, to Blackberry Enterprise, to run of the mill IMAP4 with GPRS.

BlackBerry 8707v™

Late last year, I purchased a few Blackberry 8707′s to attach to our Blackberry Enterprise network. These devices are set up for GSM, GPRS, EDGE and UMTS (for use in Japan). This setup theoretically makes it possible to use the device in Japan.

Problem #1: Our Blackberries are activated with Rogers Wireless.

I find that large Canadian companies don’t really provide support to technically saavy customers or early adopters. If you buy a Vodafone-branded BB 8707, you’re SOL if you need help from the carrier.

The details for roaming in Japan on the Rogers website are sketchy. We’ve used Blackberries in Russia, Ukraine, Thailand, India, France, Germany and even China. Japan’s networks are quite different since they don’t really support GSM out there.

Rogers reccomends that you rent a phone while in Japan (along with a new phone number, etc.). The proliferation of quad-band phones like the Nokia E61 and Blackberry 8707 makes it possible for these phones to work in Japan without renting a phone but there is the question of a roaming agreement between Rogers and the Japanese carriers (in this case, Softbank and NTT DoCoMo).

After several phone calls to Rogers where I got a myriad of responses from somewhat clueless customer service agents telling me to refer to their website to flat out refusals to answer questions because I’m using an unsupported device (DUH! If I could buy a supported device for this application, I WOULD).

Problem #2: Which carrier do I select in Japan? DoCoMo? Vodafone (who obviously supports the hardware)? SoftBank? KDDI?

Well, after encountering all the rhetoric from the people at the network, there was a thought of switching all of our users off of Rogers on to a network that works, even if we have to go offshore and spend money upfront to secure the accounts. At this point, reliability outweighs the cost.

On the same trip, the Blackberry was tested and worked flawlessly. Australia (where we picked up a spare couple of Vodafone simcards activated and ready to go in case) and Thailand.

Upon arrival to Japan, when loaded with a Rogers simcard, the device stated that the connection was refused. The Vodafone simcard worked without a hitch.

I decided to report this issue to Rogers who’s agent, after some investigation, mentioned the account didn’t have “Blackberry Dot Net” on the account. Strange but apparently this didn’t affect the device in other countries but did in Japan.

Anyhow, after that small addition to the account, it was good to go. Finally, global communications on NTT DoCoMo.

PS – Vodafone staff are very helpful with roaming in Japan. Probably has something to do with Australia being i-mode enabled (therefore having strong ties to Japan) thanks to people like Walter Adamson.

aside 20 Jun

How Do People Read Online?

From ONEList June 2006 (ONE/Northwest and CommEn Space)

Do you have an email newsletter? If so, then usability guru Jakob Nielsen’s latest studies of users’ eye movements across web pages is compelling visual evidence of how people read on the web, and how it is different from how they read print.

Nielsen draws three key conclusions for online writing:

Users won’t read your text thoroughly in a word-by-word manner. Exhaustive reading is rare, especially when prospective customers are conducting their initial research to compile a shortlist of vendors. Yes, some people will read more, but most won’t.

The first two paragraphs must state the most important information. There’s some hope that users will actually read this material, though they’ll probably read more of the first paragraph than the second.

Start subheads, paragraphs, and bullet points with information-carrying words

that users will notice when scanning down the left side of your content. They’ll read the third word on a line much less often than the first two words.

aside 9 Oct