October 2010
1 post
hello world
hi hi
January 2010
1 post
MBC finally gives in and embraces P2P sharing →
MBC, a major Korean broadcasting company, announced (link in Korean) it will make nearly all of its content available to anyone for sharing. This means any individual or…
December 2009
3 posts
iPhone Is The Best Selling Phone in Korea →
(Via Bloter.net) According to Atlas Research Group, a mobile-focused research firm in Korea, iPhone came out as the best selling phone in Korea in the week of November 30. During that…
Let's go Korea →
Disclaimer: Not tech-related
(Via Lovesera) It’s a holiday season! For anyone interested in visiting Korea anytime soon for whatever reason, here’s a good (and free) Korea guidebook.
Google Korea Unveils New Homepage →
Discaimer: Google is my current employer. This post is purely personal and therefore does not represent the company’s official voice in any ways whatsoever.
Google Korea has unveiled a…
November 2009
1 post
iPhone Finally in Korea! 22K Pre-order In Its... →
No more “in Korea, iPhone is the next month phone” joke.
KT is launching Apple iPhone soon and has opened a pre-order site this past Sunday. For the first 2 days, KT sold 22,000 iPhones (which are to be shipped out on the 28th). With this run-rate, KT will likely sell 400K-500K iPhones within the year. The sales figures are quite promising, considering it’s been only 2 days...
October 2009
2 posts
ShowStreet lets you see street photos on top of... →
ShowStreet, dubbed “Virtual Street Walk”, displays actual photos of streets on top of Google Maps, making user feel as if he was virtually walking along the street. The service is now live in…
“They are here in Korea”
September 2009
2 posts
SK Telecom App Store: No Shortage Of Criticism →
Picture from Digital Times
Perhaps SK Telecom shouldn’t have launched their newest app store, dubbed “T-Store”. There had been a lot of hypes before its launch, but when the SKT…
LIFT Asia 2009: You Should Definitely Check This... →
I’m finally breaking out of my social media silence. Coming back from business trip and holidays, I was faced with ridiculous amount of work.
Lift Asia 2009 is taking place…
August 2009
1 post
Naver Japan Mobile Beta →
Naver launched mobile version of its recently-unveiled Japanese web search service. Called Naver Mobile Beta, the service claims to have features that are especially tailored for mobile users.
…
July 2009
6 posts
A Glimpse into SK Telecom's App Store →
These days, it almost looks like it’s harder to find mobile companies that are not building their own version of app stores. SK Telecom, Korea’s #1 wireless carrier, is of course no exception….
Seoul: Best city for mobile LBS? →
Yet another interesting, “only possible in Korea” story. For those who didn’t know, Seoul is pretty famous for its healthy (or almost unhealthy?) dose of night life. Recently, a civil…
Cyworld to launch App store →
Similarly to Facebook, iPhone, and Mixi, Cyworld is also launching (link in Korean) its own version of app store. Earlier, Cyworld had announced plan to support Google’s Open Social….
Tmax Soft unveils a new OS, but success still in... →
Apparently, Google is not the only company that announced plan for launching a new OS. Just a day before the “nuclear bomb” news about the Chrome OS, Tmax, a Korean software company, …
Picture of the day - a Korean rural house with 85... →
This is not the post aboout the latest, cutting edge IT development of Korea. New York Times reports a man nicknamed the “antenna man”, who has set up 85 satellite dishes in his rural…
Startup Seoul →
This is a hopelessly belated post, but recently there was Startup Seoul (link in Korean), a great event put together by three startup entrepreneurs - David Lee, John Kim, and …
June 2009
7 posts
Naver Japan search finally unveiled →
Naver Japan search, the culmination of years of hard work by the Korean search giant, has finally been unveiled and is now available to some 5,000 beta testers. Reviews are already coming…
Exploring the possibilities of interactive media →
Note: This is a guest post by Jean K. Min, former director of international division at OhmyNews. The post is excerpt from Min’s presentation on May 21 for the Infinity Ventures Summit in…
Korean Twitter users certainly know how to use... →
Who said Twitter is only for individuals? Korean Twitter users are gathering together and making self introductions on a site devoted to “the ice-breaking among Korean Twitterers”. User can make…
Itgling allows threaded blogging, akin to Gmail →
Itgling (pronounced It-glee-ing) is a new blogging service from Korea that tries to foster threaded communication among bloggers. After a quick spin, I find it a pretty unique and clever…
LGT sees its mobile web use grow by 600% in one... →
LG Telecom, Korea’s third largest wireless carrier (think Softbank Mobile of Japan), announced its wireless internet service offering (branded “Oz”) has seen the usage growth of…
Yet again, no iPhone for Korea →
In the recent WWDC 2009, Apple announced iPhone 3G S and gave the list of countries the phone will be available - Korea wasn’t included in the list this time again. Korea is just about the only…
ViiKii is Youtube for international videos →
A few days ago, I met with the founders of ViiKii, a Valley-based startup specializing in sharing subtitled international videos. The husband-and-wife team originally come from Korea and they…
May 2009
8 posts
Top Korean sports celebrity to join Twitter →
After Oprah’s blessing, Twitter has become officially mainstream, and many celebrities are joining the micro-blogging service. Yuna Kim, a Korean figure skater who is one of the most popular sports…
Korean internet portals join the mourning as the... →
Last weekend, the news that caught all Koreans in shock was the former president Roh’s death. The nation is in mourning, and many of the major Korean internet sites were quick to participate in…
Playstreet lets you walk through Seoul's hotspots →
Playstreet is a new service that sort of combines the best of Google’s street views and Yelp.com. In a nutshell, Playstreet, a Seoul-based startup service, is a local review service on select…
Cyworld to embrace Open Social →
Image from Google
Cyworld, Korea’s largest social network famous for its Minihompies and virtual goods marketplace, announced it will embrace Google’s Open Social…
Enswer.me seems to have found the holy grail of... →
Boys Over Flowers was the nation’s most watched TV drama. Based on a Japanese animation, the Korean TV drama saw phenomenal success, with its ratings as high as 30%.
In…
Wetoku is Interview 2.0 →
Wetoku is a new web service out of Korea that doesn’t try to do too many things, but does one thing very well — interviewing someone on the internet. Doing an interview can be a rather…
(Admin) My personal homepage: Planet Chang →
Just a quick house-keeping announcement. I built a new personal homepage: Planet Chang. I used Weebly for drag and drop site building, and used feeds and widgets from various sites to…
No cram school after 10PM; a boon for e-learning? →
Image from Google
I think this is one of those only-in-Korea stories. Korean government announced plan to strengthen the current regulation on late-hour classes in Hakwons, the…
April 2009
3 posts
Korea's leading games company to downsize its web... →
NC Soft, Korea’s leading online games company, appears to have shifted down on its Web 2.0 play through Openmanu business division. (Link in Korean). NC Soft is one of the world’s biggest…
Newspaper says "Cyber exiles" are increasing in... →
More and more Korean netizens are “fleeing to foreign internet services”, in response to tighter net censorship recently being implemented by the Korean government, Korean newspaper …
Does the concept of country matter any more in the... →
Sorry about the recent slow posting - Yes I’ve been terribly busy, but it is also rather difficult to blog when the sweeping story in the nation’s web industry involves your own employer. I’m…
March 2009
6 posts
SK Telecom's Stealth Project: Create an... →
SK Telecom, Korea’s top mobile carrier, is rumored (link in Korean) to be undertaking a secret project called “Project G”, or “Project Giant”.
What SKT wants to achieve…
Korean March Madness, and the Nation of Online... →
Korea has had its own version of March Madness, in the name of World Baseball Classic. Korean team won the silver medal in a close nail-biter against Japan. What a match.
Now the games are…
Why Korea (or anywhere else) can't create another... →
My personal mission statement (at least for the chapter of my life I’m in now) is to take Korean/Asian innovation to the world outside. That’s what I do in my day job - We are integrating our…
Nate Q&A is Korea's Aardvark →
SK Communications is an affiliate of a Korean conglomerate SK Group. SK Comms has the famous Cyworld and a major Korean web portal Nate.com. Nate offers Korea’s most popular IM service, Nate On…
Korean government to set up "Global Game Hub" →
This is another dug-up news from the past week (the news have been slow anyway). Korean government has disclosed plan to set up the “Global Game Hub” in Bundang/Pangyo area, a “new city” to…
Naver AdCast lets portal viewers control display... →
The other day, Naver announced AdCast, a new display banner ad system that allows viewers to exert control over the banner ads they see on Naver’s front page.
User can stop/replay flash…
February 2009
11 posts
Universal Chargers: nothing new for Korea →
(Contributed by Andrew Ace)
It was recently announced in Barcelona that all the major
cell phone manufacturers will start to use a single universal charger by the
year 2012. This…
See? I told ya Asian bloggers are different →
A Seoul-based blog marketing company called Blogyam published “Blogosphere Insight”, a report on Korea’s blog users. The report looked at more than 57,000 blogs from 7 major blog services…
"Naver California"? →
A recent article by the Economist notices yet again Naver’s success in the Korean market. Naver’s total domination in Korea hardly surprises anyone, but what was quite interesting was Naver’s…
Hello - Kim Jong Il Speaking Here →
Found something interesting while digging through some old news. According to Chosun Ilbo, Orascom of Egypt, seemingly the sole wireless phone service provider in North Korea, said it now has…
Samsung Mobile to Join the App Store Fray: Are... →
Recently Samsung Mobile has been the biggest gainer in the global mobile phone market. As if it wasn’t enough to become the best-selling maker in some key European markets like the UK and France,…
Using Mozilla Firefox in Korea →
Note: The following is a guest post, contributed by Andrew Ace. a startup entrepreneur with expertise in social networking and viral marketing. For Andrew’s full profile, see below.
…
Bonjour, Paris - Web 2.0 Asia goes to Forum... →
Here I am in Paris participating in the Forum Net Explorateur, a hightech/business conference held by the French Senate. Overall, the event is a lot more upscale than I had…
What Do They Put In The Water?: Lessons for Asian... →
This is a guest post from Eyal Gura, an Israeli entrepreneur who has rich startup experience such as founding Picscout and Picapp, as well as Wharton MBA, under his belt. For more…
Now There's a Cellphone that Detects Your Breath →
In Korea, the “haptic UI” phones (namely the touch screen phones) were all the rage in 2008. Now, Korean cellphone maker Pantech hopes it can further extend this new trend of…