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

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.

Read the full story

Bloter, working in conjunction with local data mining firm Gruter, has come up with an informative infographic drawn from Twitter use in Korea between April 1, 2009, and July 31 of this year. As they were unable to base their research on nationality per se, Bloter instead focused on Tweeters who wrote at least 10 percent of their Tweets in Korean. It is, Bloter says, the first study in Korea to draw on Tweet information over such a long period. 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.