nanoomi

The latest object of my affection is my new Asus Transformer.

No it’s not a robot in disguise – rather it’s a new netbook. Or it’s a new Android Tablet.

Actually its both. On top we have a 10.1 inch resistive touch screen tablet with 1280×800 LCD display. It packs 1GB of RAM and 16GB of memory. You’ll purchase it in Korea running Android Honeycomb, but will be prompted to upgrade to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) as soon as you are connected via wifi and have enough juice in the battery.

Down below is the thing that separates the Transformer from other Tablets – the Keyboard. Yes you can get Keyboard docks for the Galaxy Tab, or Bluetooth it with the iPad but the integration of keyboard and tablet is where there is more than meets the eye. (There’s your gratuitous Transformers toy reference). The keyboard includes a multi-touch track pad, dedicated function keys including a system settings, camera, wifi, back and home buttons.

Excuse my horrendously messy desk!

But it is the USB ports that are amongst the greatest draws here.

Plug in a normal USB stick and browse files at will. SD card reader? No problem. USB charging? No worries – the only thing I haven’t done is plug my camera into it yet. Great for playing video (especially on the NVIDA powered 16:1 screen).

And has Android come of age or what? Ice Cream Sandwich is amazing (compared to The Galaxy Tab’s Gingerbread), and being able to use Chrome (in beta) from Google is bliss! Full web browsing on a tablet, Its been close in the past with The Dolphin Browser, but even in Beta, Chrome for Android is just like the Desktop experience. Finally Asus bundles in a slew of useful apps – including Polaris Office – the best Android Office Suite I have seen! (My horrid work documents that always get screwy format wise in anything but Word appear perfectly on screen and export nicely).

Other software includes An ebook thing, a UPnP thing you can stream media to on your home network app backup utilities and Asus offers a year of free cloud storage when you sign up.

Possible things I am going to have to watch out for: Lack of a protective case (bought one on eBay – it’s a’comin’) means the Transformer hasn’t left my desk (except to go on the radio this morning) so it has remained plugged in to the wall. Purported battery life is 5 and a half hours. We’ll see. Notably the keyboard also has a battery and charges the tablet when the two are attached.

The biggest issue I’m having at the moment is opening the damn thing!when attached to the keyboard and folded closed the tablet and keyboard lay flush. Most laptops have a little groove to give your fingers some purchase when opening. The Asus lacks one. The hinge on the keyboard side is new so quite stiff. Hopefully it’ll loosen up over time – not too loose though of course!

If you have a spare W499,000 and in the market for a netbook give the Transformer a look. (Technically an Asus EEE Tablet Transformer T101) Its ability to handle documents alone might be enough to persuade some people.

Score★★★★ 4/5

With Instagram still not available on Android, the market is open to competitors to stake their photo-sharing claims. Pudding.to is the latest, promising to be “The most innovative photo sharing app ever”. That means filters, yes, but also the ability to upload multiple photos, and richer tags including music and location.

So says the review I found somewhere. (Honestly I took an iPhone shot of it on a computer screen)

I have talked about Pudding before, specifically Pudding Camera – published by successful Korean App developers KT Hitel (part of the KT conglomerate of companies) who have brought you Pudding Camera (2011 iTunes App Store Best Seller, 20 odd thousand downloads on Android), Korean Celeb Face Match (Don’t ask!) and the original Korean Foursquare clone “I’m In” amongst others

KTH love their Phone cameras – as evidenced by the original Pudding Camera, which was translated to English and found great success outside of Korea. with their new App “Pudding.to” they’re taking on instagram with the ability to share those photos you’ve taken and add all the prerequisite filters it seems people are so craving to turn their “crap-snaps” and “sel-cas” into introspective lomo-ised works of art. (Not that I necessarily dislike that….)

KTH took the proactive step of launching pudding.to in both Korean and English simultaneously and have associated Blogs for Pudding Camera, pudding.to and Korean Celeb Face Match at – you guessed it – www.pudding.to (.to being the TLD for The Kingdom of Tonga and “to” being 2, as in their second camera app! Smart aye!)

Below is something of a walk-through of the app and some screenshots for Y’all:

Welcome to Pudding.to!

Like InstaGram, You can see popular photos

Recommendations on Pudding photographers to follow

User Profile

Take a picture

Add a filter, frame and add in a tilt-shift effect

Add a mood Tag

Or choose up to four photos for a collage effect

Be careful not to cut off any heads

Add a comment, Tag with hashtags, what you’re listening to or your current location

et voila!

These were taken on the iOS version of the app. I have had some trouble running Pudding.to on Android, specifically on Gingerbread 3.21 and Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0. I have been in touch with the developers at KTH and they note that the issue (not being able to login) is known and has to do with authentication on non-network devices, i.e. you can only use pudding.to on phones and tablets with 3G and LTE connectivity, my original Wifi Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 and Asus EEE Tablet Transformer (neither of which connects to a cell network) are sh*t out of luck – for now. I have been assured that the issue will be fixed in the next update – 1.0.3. I am not sure if this affects non-connected iPad 2s and iPod Touches with Cameras – Kudos to anyone who can test out the app and let me know.

Overall Pudding.to is a pretty good follow up to the original pudding camera. The addition of extra tagging options and ability to view users in your area add to the functionality and beat Instagram. In future updates I would like to see a couple of more filters and of course a fix for non-networked devices. Best of all – It’s free!

Score: ★★★★ 4/5

Last week I attended the Launch event for Samsung’s SmartTVs, the latest refresh in Samsung’s 3D, internet connected television line.

While Samsung continues to be embroiled in open warfare with Apple over phone patents and trade dress, the television part of its business goes from strength to strength and is arguably leading TV makers LG and Sony in both innovation and advances in flat screen technology.

Read the full story

The iPhone 4S launches in Korea tomorrow (11 November 2011) but yesterday I got a sneak peak at the 4S thanks to a source with access to those kinds of things.

On the outside the 4S is the same as the iPhone 4 albeit with a slight modification to the case in terms of where the volume buttons and standby button are.

But the insides are all new promising faster performance thanks to a better processor and a much better 8 MegaPixel Camera with a new lens optimised for low light conditions and a Sony made image sensor meaning you can leave the point and shoot at home – the iPhone 4S will probably be your new camera as well as your phone.

The most hyped and potentially killer app to come to the iPhone in this iteration is “Siri”. Touted as your personal digital assistant, Siri takes voice command of your phone to a new level. Able to parse real language you can tell Siri to send a message to a contact and dictate the contents of the message and check it before sending it off – all with a single touch.

“What can I help you with today?”

The funny thing is that, for now, Siri doesn’t speak Korean, nor does its database cover anything Korea related – the word from Apple being it might not be up and running until next year some time. Case and point:

If you are in the Market for a new phone – the iPhone 4S might just be the ticket – with KT offering some good deals:

The 16GB model will cost ₩814,000 outright. Going by my current phone plan i-Value for ₩54,000/month you’ll get 300 minutes of calling, 300 messages and unlimited Internet, while the handset will only cost you ₩212,000 or about ₩8,000 a month over the course of a 2 year contract.

BUT wait – there’s more! KT will let you trade in your iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4 and give a further discount on the price of the handset:

Trading in your iPhone 3GS will net you a discount of between ₩100 – ₩150,000 depending on the capacity and the iPhone 4 will net you a discount of up to ₩210,000! Meaning for some customers upgrading to the iPhone 4S is practically free!

Free!

If you are in the neighborhood, yours truly, The Chosun Bimbo wil be at KT’s Gwanhwamun Global store tomorrow morning between 7:30 – 9:30am demonstrating Siri (in English) at KT’s launch event. There will be balloons, geeks, girls in short skirts dancing to loud obnoxious music and there might even be snacks!

A big thanks to my source for the peek – the views expressed here have nothing to do with KT and they’re not paying me. Although if they’d like to give me a free iPhone I’ll say pretty much anything. Especially if it’s against dirty ol’ SK Telecom. Boo!

A game category has finally been added to Korea’s App Store this morning. For nearly two years the game category had been blocked due to concerns from the Game Ratings Board about the content rating of games. To get around this, many users simply used a U.S or other international iTunes account to download games from the that country’s App Store. Nevertheless there were not many games made in Korean for the domestic market apart from a few in the ‘entertainment’ section of the App Store.

The block was an obstacle for many game developers and some even claimed that the government was holding back the game industry in a nation of gamers. Now that the category is open, competition is expected to heat up between mobile game developers, some who had already started preparing their products for the new market on news of the upcoming change.

The news also comes at a significant time for Apple as the iPhone 4S is due to be released on November 11th in South Korea.

People left messages of condolence outside the Frisbee store in Gangnam

And so it was that I found out about the passing of Steve Jobs in the middle of a class this morning. God knows what compelled the student to be checking the news headlines at just that moment, but it there it was. At the end of class I lit a cigarette, as I always do, and scrolled through Twitter, knowing that if there were to be an outpouring of public grief, or at least respect, I would find it there.

Sure enough, links to obituaries, “Steve’s life in pictures”, and “Steve Jobs timelines” were there, along with condolences from the likes of Bill Gates and Sergy Brin. And as I read through them I had to catch myself so as not to shed a tear.

Steve Jobs changed the world. Hyperbole? Perhaps. But isn’t it fitting that I should be writing this very post on an iPad, tethered to The Internet via an iPhone while I hurtle along on The Metro deep beneath the streets of Seoul?

Steve Jobs changed Korea. Well not quite. But the uptake of iPhone, iPad, iPod and MacBook here might cause you to rethink your initial assessment. Were it not for the iPhone, Facebook and Twitter wouldn’t have seen the light of day in Korea had it not been for iPhone. The so-called halo effect brought about by iPhone not only brought Twitter and Facebook to Korea but has destabilised the entrenched interests of Samsung to the point where both companies are suing each other, the Galaxy Tab is banned in Australia and The EU (at least temporarily) and there is now contention that Samsung will seek injunctive relief to stop the iPhone 4S from being sold in Korea.

Changed Korea? Maybe. Shook things up a bit (for the better for consumers)? definitely.

Its fitting that most Western, Judeo-Christian depictions of heaven are of a happy, white, smoothed edge sort of place, like the supple curves of a white iPhone. Jobs will fit right in. You can’t help but think God will have a new MacBook Pro by the end of the weekend.

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.” — Steve Jobs

New figures from analytics firm Distimo have revealed the rather astonishing fact that Korea ranks No. 3 in the world for daily downloads of free apps from Apple’s App Store.

According to Distimo’s analysis, Korean iPhone users downloaded an average total of 1 million free apps per day in August. This placed it third behind the United States, at 4 million daily downloads, and China, at 1.5 million. It scarcely needs to be pointed out that in terms of population, Korea is a shrimp beneath those two whales.

Read the full story

Chris Backe of Chris in South Korea fame, has been working on an iPhone app called Seoul Taxi. designed to make life easier for visitors and residents alike, the app concentrates on making your communications with Seoul’s many and varied taxi drivers something of a more pleasant experience. Chris was  gracious enough to give me a free copy to review.

Designed for iOS 4 , the app is specifically for iPhone and iPad Touch and gets scaled if you use it on iPad. I can understand the choice here, if you are going to a destination I guess you are more likely to take your phone with you. On the other hand the iPhone’s display is a little small for your average middle aged taxi driver. Having to hand one’s phone over to a taxi driver is always a dodgy proposition while in contrast holding up the iPad’s 10 inch display is fine for even the most far sighted of Seoul’s taxi drivers!

The app lists over 2000 destinations in Seoul including over 800 restaurants and close to 100 hotels as well as other destinations ranging from art galleries (who knew there were so many galleries in Seoul) to over 150 bars.

Now if you know where you are going and are strictly using the app to assist you in your taxi dealings, simply enter the name of your  destination and hit search, odds are you’ll get the info you need.

Once you have found your destination you are presented with a couple of options. Selecting “Taxi Card”will display the address information in big , bold, white-on-black Korean which you then show your driver. Being an iOS app, hitting the phone number will place a call to the destination – particularly good if your driver still hasn’t figured out where to go from the address and hitting the location address option will bring up Google Maps just in case the taxi driver still has no idea where to go.

one of the best features of Taxi Guide Seoul is being able to share the taxi card information. You are able to send the address to people via MMS message – handy if you are meeting a group of people and need to give them directions. Finally you can create your own cards for destinations you find that Chris and his developer HoodHot have yet to discover.

The big advantage of Taxi Guide is its ability to be used off line – visitors to Seoul don’t want to be paying expensive roaming charges.

However this means some features that would otherwise be standard in an app like this are missing. Any app that deals with destinations these days needs Foursquare integration. It just makes sense that upon arrival at your destination you would “check-in”. And for the legions of people intent on sharing every aspect of their lives, Twitter is also missing. Elsewhere, Seoul is constantly changing and apps like this need frequent updates. Future updates will have to be potentially large downloads, where as a “live” app might be able to handle the dynamic nature of Seoul more efficiently. A way around this might be to make users own notes able to be uploaded and shared beyond just their friends.

the only other quibble I might have is the price. while I scored a free copy for review, HoodHot’s other apps for other destinations in Asia range from $4.99 at launch to a whopping $9.99. I would have to say I would not be prepared to pay that much for an app that has no social media integration and lacks the ability to upload and share user created information, and especially when there are a number of (albeit slightly more complicated) free alternatives, such as Google maps and even Foursquare which provide address and direction / destination information.

Bimbo Rating ★★★✩  – half a star off for lack of social, 1 star off for price.

Last night I sat down (virtually speaking) with Jeff Lebow of Koreabridge.net and freelance web designer Mattew Weingard, and discussed the state of the Internet here in Korea.

On the table, Google’s most recent run in with the Dongdaemun Police Station Cyber Crimes unit, a surge towards responsible web design, a merging of the way Korea and Koreans use The Internet with the way the rest of the world uses The Internet, The Galaxy Tab 10.1 and my new watch.

Of particular interest, aside from the topics discussed, is the voodoo that Jeff has put together to allow him to record interviews etc on Google+ using Hangouts, Live Stream, some chewing gum and Gaffer Tape, the results of which you can see below: