nanoomi

The rate at which technology has improved in the past few decades can only be regarded as staggering. Smartphones can now do most things which were only previously fantasized about in sci-fi films of the past. With the recent addition of Apple’s Siri, consumers are now more curious than ever as to how intelligent computers will become.

Affective Computing

One factor which usually isn’t taken into account when designing technology or software is the feelings of the person using it. “Affective computing” is how computers recognize and respond to human emotion. While this field remains fairly undeveloped compared to others, one Korean startup has already been working hard on creating services which use this technology.

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Major Portal Sites to Stop Collecting National ID Numbers

Major Portal sites such as Naver and Daum are to stop collecting national identification numbers from next year when users sign up for services. The decision has come after privacy concerns that have been escalating due to a spate of incidents in which users’ personal information was leaked by major internet sites. Both Naver and Daum have announced that they will not collect users’ national identification numbers until the end of next year. Daum also plans to gradually remove all numbers that are currently registered in its database. In the future, users may instead have to confirm their identity by other means such as cellphone, credit card or I-pin. According to Yonhap news, portal Nate stopped receiving identification numbers in July last year after the personal data of 35 million users was leaked by operator SK Communications.

You can read more information about the real-name system at Nanoomi blogs, Popular Gusts and Footman’s Frothings.


Kakao Talk More Popular than Texting

According to an article by Chosun Business released yesterday, phone users send 1.3 times more messages with Kakao Talk than by general text messages. Kakao Talk continues to grow and in a survey of Android users that was carried out by online market research company Rankey, Kakao Talk was accessed an average of 143.8 times during one week. Earlier this year users were upset after the company changed their data collection policies. Nevertheless the real-time messenger now has approximately 25,000,000 users globally and is available in Korean, English, Japanese and many other languages.


The Shutdown Law – One Month Later

The controversial gaming “shutdown law” has now been in place for just over one month. The policy is a new measure which came into effect on the 20th of November to help curb online game addiction, a major problem among teens and children in South Korea. The law is supposed to prevent gamers under the age of 16 from connecting to game servers between midnight and 6am but many say it has had little affect. According to a recent Yonhap article, many students are calling the policy a failure and have simply been using their parents identification numbers to play games past midnight. Another major weak point of the law is that Korea’s most popular game Starcraft is still able to be played without restriction. Others are also protesting the principle of the law, claiming that it has removed a way for students to rest once they get home from studying at academies.

Nanoomi blogger Niels Footman blogged about the law before it came into place earlier this year.

Ever since blogging took off in the early 2000s, the trend has continued to grow, especially in South Korea where most of the population uses the internet in some way everyday – whether it be via their phone, tablet device or personal computer. As internet users started to move away from “cafes” or online message boards, users began to create their own content by the tens of thousands. Among the explosion of new bloggers, some started to become increasingly popular and were named “Power Bloggers” due to the influence they had over their dedicated and large audiences.

TNM is a unique Korean startup which was founded in 2009 by Seung-eun Myung and Young Han. The company offers a variety of services to its network of about 300 partner bloggers. To become a partner blogger, one needs to have a high level of traffic and a consistent output of quality content. “Partners” are not simply unknown faces on the nether side of the internet, but are a group made up of individuals who are experts or enthusiasts in their field. TNM also helps foster a sense of community between bloggers by frequently holding events, workshops and parties where they can meet one another face to face. Read the full story

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.

In September 17, the Cyworld Mini Hompy, long the unchallenged king of Korean social media, celebrated its 10th birthday. Predating Facebook, MySpace and even Friendster, the Mini Hompy was groundbreaking in its time — many Koreans claim it as the first true social networking site — and is still far and away the most widely used SNS service in Korea. Despite the recent onslaught of Facebook, Twitter and their slew of Korean clones, Cyworld still boasts a staggering 26 million (and climbing) registered users, more than half the country’s population.

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For a country known to most of the world as a sea of black surrounded by the nighttime lights of the booming economies of Northeast Asia, North Korea is surprisingly active on the Internet.

North Korea’s slow embrace of the Internet as well as current challenges facing South Korea’s cyber community were discussed in depth during an Aug. 6 panel hosted by the Asian American Journalists Association in Seoul. Nanoomi volunteers helped organize the event and round up interested local journalists, foreign correspondents and those curious about the Internet in the world’s most wired country and arguably one of the world’s least.

The panel, moderated by Steve Herman of VOA, covered the use and challenges faced by both Koreas in the information age.

Martyn Williams from IDG News Service was up first and gave an insightful look into North Korea’s use of the Internet over the past decade and how they are using it now. It was interesting to learn that one of North Korea’s first websites was a gambling site which claimed to be fairer than other sites. He also discussed North Korea’s recent move of opening up the Internet to foreign journalists within North Korea.

I especially liked how Martyn went into detail about when North Korea really started to become active on the Internet and described the different sites plus social networking accounts which North Korea operates. Since most of these sites are blocked here in South Korea, it was great to finally get a look at what modern North Korean websites look like. I was surprised to see that some sites are available in many different languages.

The next presentation was by Myung Seungeun, CEO of TNM. Unfortunately due to personal reasons he was unable to make the event but Cynthia Yoo from Nanoomi did a wonderful job of presenting it on his behalf. The presentation was about censorship of the internet within South Korea and went into detail about the ‘real name’ system which is currently in place here. You can see the presentation and read a full translation here.

After the presentations there was a Q & A session where we were joined by a veteran of the South Korean media scene, Sungkyu Lee, currently CEO of muzalive.com, a Korean music social network.

Lee helped answer questions about Korea’s real name system and portal sites.

I was impressed by the amount of questions that were asked by the members of the audience. There was a lot of interest in the real name system which was linked to a hacking incident a few weeks back.

The attack on South Korean company SK Communications Co., which runs the country’s third most visited portal site, released some 35 million users’ personal data, making it the worst hacking attack in the history of the country of roughly 48 million. South Korea’s real name system, which in effect holds Internet companies responsible for what users say on their websites is viewed by many to be a contributing factor to the severity of the attack. Having this information encourages the telecommunications companies to store users’ personal data for long periods of time to help protect itself from future lawsuits.

Martyn explained that although a lot of these hacking incidents are blamed on North Korea, it is hard to know if this is the truth or not.

It was a casual event held at a great venue, Platoon Kunsthalle in Nonhyun-dong. Platoon is an amazing building made from shipping containers with plenty of space for media, art and other culture related events. They also have a bar and DJ equipment if you need them for your function.

We started off with a barbecue lunch that was beautifully cooked by Elaine Ayo from Yonhap and Ramy Inocencio from CNN International. They did a fantastic job on what was a scorching hot day.

Journalists, bloggers and many others enjoyed the lunch with a drink or two.

It was an event that was pulled off well by all those involved and although I’m not a member of the AAJA myself, I look forward to attending more events like this in the future. It was definitely great to finally see so many faces I had only previously seen as twitter updates!

The Korea Communication Commission (KCC) has released one of its periodical insights into the habits of Korea’s smartphone users, and Bloter is all over it. Among its findings: females now outnumber males among new smartphone users, more than three quarters of users have taken advantage of instant messenger services, and almost 80 percent of users have downloaded an app in the past month.

The survey took place between May 29 and June 7 of this year, and covered 4,000 smartphone users aged between 12 and 59. Dealing with four areas — smartphone use, use of apps, payment deals and use of instant messenger services — the survey was the third in a series beginning in July last year, allowing researchers to track how smartphone trends have been changing over the last 12 months. The second survey took place in January of this year.

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Last week the SeoulPodcast sat down and talked to Steve from QiRanger about his travels, the videos of Korea (and other destinations he visits) and a little snack called Balut. (Yummy).

It’s a good old-fashioned show clocking in over 3 hours – Enjoy!

You can get the podcast in the usual places or download the show directly here. (mp3 163:18)

With the iPad officially submitted to the Korean FCC this week for testing, it’s only a matter of time (rumor has it – end of November – just in time for Christmas) before the best (selling) gadget ever becomes more readily available in Korea.

November makes sense, as this is when the big jump to firmware 4.2 happens for the iPad, and no doubt this will include better language support and a much needed Korean keyboard layout.

For those of us who already have one (for which we’ve paid a premium) there is little solace; as there is no way I am upgrading to a 3G version so close after forking out 700,000 KRW to get the low end 16GB wi-fi only version. (just like I’m loath to upgrade my perfectly fine 10 month old iPhone 3Gs)

And besides wi-fi is pretty ubiquitous anyway so getting a connection on my iPad is no big deal.

Except when it is. But more on this in a moment.

In the meantime, Korean Telecoms continue to go through something of a rebirth, and in a move I never thought would happen, KT/Show has started to offer unlimited 3G internet access to customers on its iMedium and iPremium plans.

And yes…they mean unlimited (notwithstanding a fair use clause). The following is from an email I received from the English speaking part of the KT marketing team (@olleh_expats)

To answer your question, your data is indeed unlimited, regardless of whether you are tethered or not.

It continues:

That so called “limit” is part of our fair use policy, and it just means that if you use more than 100mb in a day (iPhone and any tethered devices combined), your connection might be a little slower for the rest of the day. You will not be charged for any data over 100mb, nor will you be blocked from the network or anything like that.

OK fair enough, but notice my highlighting of “might”.

In a follow up email from the (not so) English speaking part of the KT marketing team (@ollehkt)

the bandwidth speed does not get reduced all the time. It gets only reduced when the 3G networks you are using get too much loads. And it happens very rare. We are trying to build enough 3G network nationally not to experience the too much loads on the 3G network and also try to give WiFi and Wibro(Wimax) to spread the loads on 3G network. So you do not have to worry about getting the bandwidth speed reduced. If it happens, send us tweet again that we can solve the network problem.

and that’s how KT got its groove back, I found a new fondness for KT

I tweeted about this earlier today and am particularly impressed with the email responses and the responses on Twitter.

Well done KT.

“But hang on Bimbo…” you might say

“You were talking about not needing a 3G iPad, not unlimited data on your iPhone, what are you talking about? Are you high?”

No dear reader, I’m not high.

What I have done is taken a few simple (OK, not so simple) steps to turn my iPhone into a wireless hotspot, essentially “tethering” my iPad to my iPhone for connection to the internet via 3G when there is no wi-fi around.

Hence, my initial worries about whether “unlimited” really meant unlimited, and whether it included Tethering or not.

How to do all of that is coming in a post next week. I would hate to be sitting here praising KT only to turn around and tell you how to a)void the warranty on your iphone and b)exploit a grey area in this whole “unlimited” thing.

Heeheehee.

For now, mad props to KT/Show and their marketing team. I didn’t know that sending out a tweet early in the morning with the #FAIL hashtag could be so powerful.

You can read Stafford’s original post here.

Or as Fast Company might have you believe: “B+“

I have been meaning to write this for a wile, but it came to the forefront of my mind with Samsung’s official release of details about the much vaunted (by me) Galaxy Tab, its latest member in the Galaxy family which, with some reason, is being touted as the first possible tablet type computer with a chance of unseating Apple as king of tablet computing.

My ire stems from Sammy’s release of a 3G version without a WiFi-only version for those of us that a) don’t want another mobile contract and b) don’t want to have mobile contracts at more than one provider. (No way Samsung will let KT have their hands on the Galaxy Tab – not after another successful iPhone launch. (This time iPhone 4.)

Leaks from various corners have promised a WiFi-only version, as well as a 10″ (iPad size) version next year.

But no word on a Korean release as far as I can see. (Anyone who reads Korean can correct me on that one.)

In fact you would think manufacturers and telecom providers are still stuck on this whole “smartphone” kick… So 2009!

Which is not to say I wouldn’t want one if it was freely given… (Or if Samsung would like to be my pimp.)

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