Thursday, December 18, 2008

News from the Front (12/08)

Another news medley on Decmber issues within Korean media and new media.

From Korea IT Times:
-Mobile markets

- Other

  • An Information-oriented Nation: "Lee Myung-bak aims to make Korea an information-oriented nation by 2012. This visionary announcement was held to drive forward informatization and to form an international consensus. The basic scheme of informatization was discussed and voted on by the Informatization Promotion Committee chaired by the Prime Minister, Han Seung-soo on the 25th of November and it paved the way for this announcement. In addition, it also aimed to send a hopeful message including new opportunities for jobs and businesses to everyone both the public sector and business sector in this economic crisis."
  • "The Harvard of Online Education : Daegu Cyber University increases its educational capacity with two new online departments."
  • RFID exhibition reveals new applications.
  • Broadband Penetration Not Profitable?
    "Korea and Japan both have the reputations of being two of the most wired nations in the world. Japan is number three in total number of broadband subscribers, with 26.5 million according to latest reports. Korea as well is fourth with 14.1 million broadband subscribers. The United States and China are first and second, mostly due to their overwhelmingly large populations compared to other countries. However, the profitability of investing so much money into Internet infrastructure is still questionable."
From Web 2.0 Asia:
  • Gawemaster lets you find a personal tutor close to you: "Not surprisingly, personal tutoring for college prep courses is a huge business in Korea. For tutors and students alike, proximity matters. Gawemaster ("Gawe" means "tutoring" in Korean) allows user to search for tutors based on different criteria, including their location. This is a case of map API mashup - in fact, Gawemaster won the first place (in terms of site traffic) in a recent Daum map mashup contest."
  • Mintpad is one of a kind portable device: "Mintpad is a unique portable device that lets you do, well, pretty much everything. With Mintpad, you can jot down memos, draw pictures, do mobile blogging and chatting, take photos and videos, listen to music, record your voice, surf the web, exchange business cards and manage your schedule, read e-books, and God only knows what else." See picture of Mintpad here.
  • Naver Opencast lets anyone become an "information curator". "Naver, Korea's #1 portal, has always been under criticism that the service is too closed. Now Naver has brought an answer to the age-long criticism: It's called Open Cast.

From Futurize Korea:

Top New Media Events in Korea, 2008

Korea IT Times listed 15 top media events of 2008. Among them were many new media related happenings such as listed below.

  • Ministry of Information and Communication disappeared. "In February of 2008, the Ministry of Information and Communication was dissolved along with the Ministry of Science and Technology. In their place the Ministry of Knowledge Economy was created, and some departments were integrated with the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the Ministry of Public Administration and Security, and the Korea Communications Commission."
  • OECD Ministerial Meeting & World IT Show. "The OECD IT Ministerial Meeting was held from June 17 and 18, 2008 at COEX. At the same time, the World IT Show also took place on June 17~20 at COEX. For the OECD IT Ministerial Meeting, a number of the world's leading figures in the Internet and telecommunication industry gathered in Seoul to share their views. In addition, in the World IT Show, the biggest IT Show ever held in Korea, 520 IT companies and organizations from Korea and the rest of the world showed off their high-tech products and vision."
  • Mad Cow Disease drove Korean public mad. "Using the Internet as a communication medium, special interest groups whipped the Korean population into a frenzy of fear against the nonexistent threat of Mad Cow Disease in American beef imports, causing the new presidential administration to pause in ratifying the Korea-US FTA and remove some cabinet members as an appeasement sacrifice."
  • IMID 2008. "IMID 2008, KES 2008, and i-SEDEX 2008 were combined together in the Korea Electronics Grand Fair 2008. Low energy consumption displays were the hot topic at this new, bigger fair."
  • Robot World 2008. "Robots actively participated this year in the opening ceremonies for their own show, conducting the ceremonies, passing out bouquets, and dancing to popular Korean pop songs."
  • GStar 2008. "A resurgence in popularity of the GStar computer game show in Korea was helped by new management. Popular TV personalities and pop singers were present to lend a buzz of excitement to the show, which heavily featured online games this year."