Ego related posts

Since I needed a Filipino number in addition to my French number, I ended up buying the cheapest phone I could find here. It’s a Samsung GT-E1080F that costed me around 15 euros in a Samsung store. I kept my iPhone for my French number and so I am using both of them. I intend to use my Filipino phone only for calls and text messaging, but I surprisingly found out 4 cool native features that my iPhone is missing. Two of them are unforgivable though and should really be implemented in the iPhone, the other one is just funny

Auto-reject calls

Very handy when you don’t want to hear about some people. Enter her number to the block list, and all the calls from that number will be automatically rejected. I remember a friend of mine needed that feature last year, and we could never find something that works on his iPhone, neither in the native features nor in installable apps (even from the Cydia store).

Text messages: Block number

This is the same feature as the previous one, but for text messages. Again, you can edit a block list of numbers that you don’t want to receive SMSs from.

Fake call

That feature is funny. Actually, I haven’t checked if there is an app for it, there is probably one on the Cydia store. Well, this is a native feature on my Samsung phone. While in an annoying meeting that you want to escape, put your hand in your pocket and press four times the DOWN key of your phone. Then, after a variable amount of seconds (that you can change in the settings of the phone) a fake call from an unknown callee will make your phone to ring.

Privacy lock

This is quite redundant with the passcode lock of the iPhone, but still useful. Instead of locking the whole device with a passcode, the Samsung GT-E1080F will instead add locks to the key applications you wish, such as the calls logs, the address book or the SMS. So someone can still use your phone, like playing games or using the calculator, and the privacy of your SMS is still good. I think that could be a good feature for iPhone, as it often happens that I give my iPhone to friends who want to play, but not necessarily feel comfortable that they read my texts or calls logs.

There it is, I find the comparison between that little Samsung phone and a 50-times-more-expensive iPhone funny, regarding this foor little features. If you have a solution/workaround for the foor of them on iPhone, thanks to comment on that post, I am personally interested in knowing them!

Like I already did one year ago comparing mobile plans in France and in the UK, I am now writing a little review of my experience of mobile internet plans in the Philippines compared to France. Once again, you will see that France fails, and French people have good reasons to feel like cash cows sometimes…

For my comparison, I will consider “SIM only” prepaid plans, which means you just pay for your actual internet connection and not include the price of the device (phone, 3G stick or personal hotspot).

Let’s say it from the beginning, the comparison is — oh — painful for French consumers… This is what Orange (France) and Smart (Philippines) offer for unlimited surf, for prepaid plans and excluding the price of any device:

*prices are in proportion of the actual offers. To be accurate, Orange offers two unlimited options: 1 day for 6 euros, or 2 days for 10 euros. On the other hand, Smart offers two unlimited options: 1 day for 50 pesos (0.83 euros), or 5 days for 200 pesos (3.32 euros).

Let’s take the most advantageous case for Orange, which is the price for 2 days of unlimited internet, and let’s see that France is just 6 times more expensive than the Philippines.

I understand that the cost of living is no comparison between France and the Philippines. For knowing both countries, I know that the biggest difference comes from the labour cost. For the physical goods, you can find everything. Computer hardware and european cars are almost same price in the two countries, whereas food is about 2 or 3 times cheaper. Nevertheless, I will never believe that Orange is not taking advantage of the lack of competition in France to not maximise their profits excessively, at the expense of consumers.

I am writing this post from a coffee shop in Quezon City (Manila, Philippines) from my 3G connection that gives me a fair 1.5Mbps up/down for a bit less than 1 euro per day. (just for you to know the context)

Long before moving to Manila (Philippines) I have had wanted to get my hands on the Huawei e5 for its capability to turn a 3G connection into a wifi hotspot. I had tried to find it in Europe (France, UK, Romania…) and in the USA (Los Angeles, New York City), but now way to find any. Actually, that device seems to be available only in Asia (or online, but as I was going to the Philippines soon, I could wait).

Basically, what the Huawei e5 does, is to turn your 3G connection into a WIFI hotspot where you can connect up to 5 devices. There is also a USB port that allows you to connect another computer like any USB modem. So you can in the end connect up to 6 devices. read more… »

I am now writing this post from a Coffee Shop located in Eastwood City (Manila, Philippines). This is my first experience as an entrepreneur-traveller (as I explained my plans already some months ago, how I intend to live an unusual life) and let me tell you how things are going so far…

I went for a 24 hours trip (flew from Frankfurt to Dubai, Dubai to Manila, drove in the traffic to get to my flat…). However jetlag wasn’t so heavy, maybe I get used to it as I am travelling more and more. Here, climate is a shock compared to France. I sweat all the time when I’m outside, fortunately all the buildings have air conditioning or so. The violent typhoon that passed by Manila seems away now, at least the district I am living in doesn’t seem affected by it. Cost of living is low here, which allows me to get around in taxi easily, and have nice restaurants for the price of a meal at a French McDonald’s.

It took me some days to properly settle, get a decent Internet connection and being operational for my cruising speed. I can manage my work online pretty well so far (except I must work a bit late to be synced on the French timezone) and I will write a full post about it in the coming days.

Speed and reliability of the Internet network is a lot lower than what I expect in France, but at least it works. It’s not working well in my flat though (with 3G) but if I go down my building to the first coffee shop, I can get 1Mbps.

People here are nice and smile a lot. Customer service is not outstanding though, even if there are 10 idle sellers in the store, no one will jump on you to offer help… It’s the Filipino style, I have been told about it so it’s not a surprise, but it’s interesting to see the social and cultural differences with France Well, I could talk a lot longer about the Filipino specs, but it will be for another post!

Stay tuned!

Steve Jobs has passed away last night, 5th of October 2011. He was a great innovator, inspiration for all the IT people and entrepreneurs and we will regret him a lot.

My breakfast was bitter this morning when I read the news, but later on I found myself energised back and got some big motivation. Eclipse/Photoshop are open and working hard this afternoon. I remember Steve, and how hard work, creativity, innovation and courage led him to build this empire. Yes, even if you’re gone, you will still be a model of entrepreneurship and innovation to me and my fellows. You can rest in peace now, Steve.

Note 1: homage to Steve Jobs is on Apple’s website
Note 2: you can send condolences to rememberingsteve@apple.com

Last days, I told you about my disappointment when I rushed at installing Mac OSX Lion only a few hours after it was released. Quickly, I decided to downgrade back to Snow Leopard. Hopefully, Time Machine is a very good piece of software that works pretty well for restoring your OS to the exact state of the desired date. Here is how to do it.

1. Check that yo have saved/backuped all of your work and data you carried out since you installed Lion (USB sticks, DVDs, whatever)
2. Insert your DVD of Snow Leopard and shut down your mac
3. When starting your mac again, press the OPTION key and wait until it offers a list of volumes to boot from. Select the Snow Leopard DVD
4. In the Installer, don’t go on the process of installation. Instead, click on the Utilities menu, then choose Restore System from Backup
5. Check that you are connected to your time capsule:
   - for networked time capsules, I recommend to link an ethernet wire instead of using wifi, it will be quicker. If you really can’t use a wire, then connect to your wifi access point via the Airport Utilities menu at the top left of the screen
   - for USB time capsules (or external HDD), you don’t have to do anything special
6. In the list, select your Time Machine volume
7. In the list, select the date at which you want to restore your system to. Dates and versions of the system are indicated, so just take the most recent backup you’ve made on Snow Leopard before you installed Lion

Now you’re good for waiting several hours, depending on the size of your backup and the speed of your connection. You have the time to go and make a coffee. Wait and relax, and forget about how Steve raped you with 24 euros.

Some hours later, your mac will reboot and your system is back like before. Lion is just now an old bad memory to you, until the day you have no choice but to upgrade because major softwares will not be supported on Snow Leopard anymore.

NB: if you don’t use Time Machine, I guess you’re going to have much more troubles while downgrading from Lion (if not possible at all?). Probabilities are that you’re to make a new clean install of Snow Leopard. And that you start to use Time Machine, at last (sorry dudes).

I’m a huge fan of Apple products, and especially their OS for Mac, to me there is no better OS for my personal and professional usage. Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) was released just this afternoon, 20th of July 2011, and in the next hour I already bought and downloaded the new fresh OS. Upgrade from my Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) went well, I haven’t lost any of my data, and all of my applications are compatible with the new OS.

At first, I was especially excited about the security improvements, such as Filevault 2, Versions, and the ability to crypt Time Machine too. But now, I’m already very disappointed by Lion, on many points. I’ve been playing with Lion just for an evening, so the list of my disappointments might not be so exhaustive at the time I’m writing these lines, but here they are. read more… »

I don’t often talk about my personal life, but my new life plan looks so special to me that I needed to share it online. To set up my background, I am 24, I graduated a Master of Science (e-Business) in Oxford last year, and I founded right away the website Forexagone.com (french) with two other mates (french). I am now living in Strasbourg, France, and I pretty like my quality of life: I am a full time entrepreneur, I can adjust my working hours more or less the way I want (or not, because of course shit likes to happen during the weekend or in the middle of the night…), I am free to work anywhere as long as I’ve got my laptop and an access to the Internet, I earn enough to sustain myself, and I always have lots of fun with my friends here. But nevertheless…

I mentally gave myself 30 years old as a dead line for founding my family (or at least NOT BEFORE 30). I thus have 5 to 6 years to live an awesome life before I’m forced to have a stable life, get married and raise kids. 5 to 6 years that must be used the best way possible, because when the kids are born, I will be stuck for at least 20 years bringing them up.

Rice terraces in Baguio, Philippines

So here is the plan: travel the world, never stop to experience new countries and cultures until I reach 30. It’s not like holidays, since I’ll still be working my ass off every day from … from wherever I am staying. But since my work is flexible enough to do so, I feel I’d be so silly to spend my 6 remaining years of total freedom in the city I was born in…

read more… »

Today, I’m taking the time to talk about my new project, Forexagone.com. It’s a website (in french only so far) whose aim is to teach Forex to very beginners, in a way it has not been done before. We really make Forex easy to learn for beginners, who can really start from the very beginning and end by reaching a good level in Forex trading. Our core business is divided into 3 main sectors.

read more… »

The last day, I was given a brand new MacBook Pro at my new job. First thing to do: open Safari … in order to download Chrome! But I don’t know why (some traces of French settings?), the default search engine for Chrome was google.fr (french language), and not google.com (english language). Impossible to change it in the list of search engines, and there was this google:baseurl setting (set to google.fr) that I couldn’t overwrite. No way until I found the solution below.

Stop Chrome.

Open the following file (on Mac OS X, files is located elsewhere for Linux and Windows users):

vim ~/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Chrome/Local\ State

And look for the three following lines:

"StartupDNSPrefetchList": [ 1, "http://www.google.fr/" ]
"last_known_google_url": "http://www.google.fr/"
"last_prompted_google_url": "http://www.google.fr/"

There, change the URL by the one you want (in my case I turned google.fr in google.com).

Restart Chrome.

The default language for google should be english now. At least, it worked for me