世論 What Japan Thinks

Recently japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into browser start pages, in particular in this article, on settings on work computers.

Demographics

One the 16th of October 2007 331 members of the JR Tokai Express Research online monitor group who were employed in the private or public sectors completed a private online questionnaire. 83.1% were male, 10.6% in their twenties, 42.0% in their thirties, 33.8% in their forties, 11.8% in their fifties, and 1.8% in their sixties.

The official word is that my employers’ intranet works best with Internet Explorer, although I suspect that is code for “we can’t be bothered testing it with anything else”, and best is a relative term. Anyway, regardless of that, I use Opera as my primary browser as it is easy to switch off images and embedded Flash and other objects, not that I need to do that as I of course never ever visit any non-work-related sites. Actually, Opera 9 is banned because it contains a BitTorrent client which might spontaneously start spewing company secrets, or something. My start page is set to nothing at all, with my home browser set the same way. Internet Explorer is set to point to the intranet just because that’s what I mainly use it for.

Following some feedback on an earlier post, I’ve added in hyperlinks to SQs, as I’ve had at least two people mention my use of (to SQ) was confusing. I hope they help!
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japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research into the use of public wireless LAN connections. On the 7th of January they interviewed 330 people employed in public or private enterprise. 80.3% of the sample was male, 15.8% in their twenties, 41.5% in their thirties, 30.3% in their forties, 10.0% in their fifties, and 2.4% in their sixties.

Note that in another survey last year, almost half of all interviewed used a wireless connection at home, so it isn’t a lack of awareness holding back people, although it could of course be a lack of portable machines, although since JR Tokai Express Research’s monitor base is heavily business-person oriented (it mainly advertises though, and awards points for discounts on, shinkansen bullet trains) one might expect there to be a high percentage of people with portable devices capable of accessing WiFi access points. Perhaps the full survey results analyse this aspect, and why almost three in five want to use public WiFi but haven’t yet.

I’m writing this whilst sitting in the biggest Freds Cafe (lovely bread, well worth a visit!) in Hankyuu Umeda station in Osaka, but there is absolutely no WiFi signal present according to NetStumbler. Anyone know about the availability of free (and legal!) WiFi in central Osaka? Apart from Starbucks, who I refuse to patronise, where else is there?
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