//touch. it shall respond//

100000 units sold within a month post-release. mp3ps and navigators to follow.
full story here

i was walking around gwanhwamun the other day, and got shocked by sudden voices that ‘followed me’ on this road.
i can’t remember exactly what it was saying, but it was an ad for something. looking closely at the green, i realised that it was actually made of plastic, like the one that’s not so gracefully hanging on a cheap little plastic christmas tree. there were speakers hidden underneath, which gave me an illusion that the voice was actually following me.

it reminded me of the direction-focused multilanguage speakers at the ubiquitous dream hall and briefly thought about what it’d be like to walk around seoul in the future.

original source: muik blog

i will need to cocoon myself, i thought. i put on my ipod and quickly got on the subway to come home to my cocoon house.

original image from here

i’ve been using the storm phone, and been a happy user. listening to ringtone and coloring samples has never been frustrating – only takes one second – and there’s always a decent selection of news on the nate page (mobile portal for SK) that it actually reduces my daily online news reading time on a pc.

considering the solid reputation of samsung compared to that of lg in the domain of mobile phone production, i would’ve definitely gone for the ufo phone had it not been so expensive: the phone itself cost me only about 100 australian dollars when i got it one and a half months ago (with gov. subsidies). ufo wanted to take a bit, well, a lot, more from my financial planet – costing four to five times as much.

storm, released on august 23, has not taken the koreans by its name: only 70000 sold so far.

ufo, released on september 3, not even close: 14000.

according to a yahoo!korea article (where the figures came from), the disappointing figures are mainly because of the network infrastructure that is still in need of upgrading to better support.

i assume that’s partly true, although i have never disappointed with my phone’s performance in terms of the content and the speed that both the phone and the network provides – this includes those times when i upload large photos (storm takes 2MP images, 1600×1200) and switching on a S-DMB channel, which takes about 5-10 seconds.

another reason, i think, concerns not the technological layer of infrastructure but the socio-cultural and financial ones. my research data so far show that young people (aged 18-24, whom i call trans-youths) here are not so crazy about going online with the phone. most of my participants only make voice calls, sms, play games (sometimes with friends via bluetooth), and nothing much else. they are not interested because it costs money, and they don’t really see the point. they can go online quick and easy (… and very high in bandwidth of course) pretty much any time and anywhere for free and/or very cheaply. i had the same findings in my last research about cyworld in which users were found unwilling to use mobile cyworld.

furthermore, ringtones and coloring services are a great online-music business platform and the codec’s improving quite a lot to ensure good quality audio. however, again to my surprise, the participants are not so interested. cyworld background music is a different story though, for various reasons.

younger people (teenagers), however, present a different story. they are a lot more interested in these things, and could probably afford to buy the storm phone at least (their parents would probably be ok with paying $100). but look at the design of it. would it appeal to teenagers? hardly.

along with technological improvements (better network infrastructure to support high bandwidth content transfer) there really needs to be more considerations to the design of mobile experience (which should also take great account of socio-cultural contexts in which the experience occurs). i’m hoping to find out more about this in my research, and share more solid ideas pretty soon – yes, the end of my candidature is looming … very quickly like the beautiful foliage falling all round here.

With the typical “gift giving culture,” May gets a little crazy for everyone trying to find suitable presents - imagine the life of a 32 year old person. You need to buy presents for your parents and grand parents, your children, your children’s teachers, and your own teachers (past and present if you’re still in contact), your nieces and nephews… perhaps May deserves a title like “the month of hemorrhage.”

KTF is offering a special “txting filial piety” service to “create a space of communication with parents” for many users who are often “too shy” to express their feelings and gratitude (see the original newswire article here - in Korean). This particular service has two sub-categories:

1. Free filial piety MMS alarm service
   The user can subscribe to this free service and receive an MMS on their phone every morning. The content of the message itself is something along the lines of “I love you” and “Thank you.” The user can then send on that message to their parent/s. KTF claims that this will also have a positive effect of allowing the parents to become more familiarised with the technology of txting - something that their demographics don’t normally use.
2. Txt music and background decoration service
   As long as the user includes one of these words - “mother,” “father,” “mum,” or “dad” - in a txt and add * at the end of the receipient’s phone number, suitable music and background image (according to those terms) will be automatically inserted, turning a simple txt message into a more emotive MMS message. I’m assuming that there are other available terms, though I’m having trouble viewing content on the KTF website at the moment (I’m on a Mac using Safari and Firefox).

I kind of like these clever ideas. They’re quite lovely. And it’s very interesting how the free filial piety alarms are sent to the user, not the user’s parents, which means the user will need to pay to forward them on to their parent/s. I guess this prevents the messages from turning into spams; this 2005 article reports that 95.8 per cent of Korean cell phone users have received advertisements on their handsets, and 41.8 per cent of the survey respondents reported that they receive spam messages once or twice a week. The numbers undoubtedly have increased since then.

My mother doesn’t bother at all with smss as she knows that all she’s getting is either spam or some sort of notification that she’s already aware of anyway. So although the first few “I love you; thank you” messages may be lovely and touching, the whole idea might lose its charm within a few days and become absolutely annoying instead. And another interesting aspect of this is that forwarding the MMS everyday will incur financial commitment from the user. So it’s a “legitimate gift” with financial involvement.

I think very soon - probably tomorrow - I should get some of those “legitimate gifts” to send my own parents too, in a manner that’s slightly slower than MMS or 100mb broadband, but with genuine love and thanks :)

I’ve never quite enjoyed the whole video call idea, because to me, it felt more like a hinderance to my mobility and multifocal tendencies. However, Videkura is different in that the interaction initiative is an active one: you don’t go in and do videkura unless you want to; it’s an active form of playing.

and social.

why would you do it unless 1) you’re with friends and you want to play with them in this space and/or 2) share the outcome with other friends? Mizuko Ito and Daisuke Okabe have done a study on the social uses of purikura, which has some interesting points (view their paper here). I believe that social playing is fundamentally crucial to humanity not only because it makes people happier by means of pleasure (which I think is the key importance of playing) but also because that’s where not “coercion” but “negotiation” of the familiar and foreign can occur, leading to mergings and emergings. A lot of us miss the point; sometimes we get it, but sometimes, many times, many of us don’t.

Along the way, I’ve learnt to prefer the idea of the for- movement as compared to the against- movement. Positive verbalisastion is something that’s advocated by religions and spiritual groups, but in my case, I approach it from the “play” perspective. For example, slogans like “against terrorism” and “against poverty” fundamentally assume some form of resistance and therefore establish the definitive positions of the winner and loser. In this case, the activity of playing becomes a rigid game in which the player must try to be the winner so as not to be the loser. So playing leads to the learning of taking and breaking rather than sharing and creating. Personally I think the latter sounds much more fun and constructive.

Now, Karaoke. A few years back Karaoke recording was hugely popular in Korea and no doubt in other Asian countries too - basically you go in and sing (dance, drink, talk, scream, make out, what not) and you get an audio CD or VCD of your performance. you could then share it with others (if you dare) or keep it as a sentimental souvenir. You can still do it at some karaokes but the whole recording hype’s pretty much gone flat. Then the second stage of that, at least in the case of Korea, was a variety show on TV that featured a segment in which general pubic would volunteer and perform in a karaoke box (if selected) as a performance battle against celebrities - like these girls:

This has been one of the most popular videos of all times on YouTube and subsequently been parodied by many keen youtubeans - from various cultures including US, Mexico, Switzerland … and the Sims:

So here, you do exactly what you would in a karaoke room but in a karaoke booth (like purikura booth) but with increased consciouness about the assumed audience, and in this case the performers are “selected” by the show’s producer, and the outcome is “broadcast” via television.

With videkura, U(sers) can choose to perform and communicate their “creative outcome” in a method/s of their choice. There are two types of videkura available in Japan at the moment:

1. Ututu’s MYSQ
   MYSQ stands for “My style so qute” - I love quirky semi-make-sense english names like this. Their website has some info in English. I like their video; especially how they used a narrator with a Japanese accent :) To view the video, click on the “concept” button as shown below, and click on the video:

   Basically you go into mysq, choose your songs etc, and go crazy while stepping on different seonsor tiles on the floor (which will generate video effects) and dance to the music (again, your sensor-enabled wrist bands will generate effects accordingly). Once you’re done, your video is compressed and sent to your mobile phone and a QR code will be displayed on the screen. Then you scan that QR code with your phone, which works as a link to your video, so you can send it to your friends - for different purposes: to make them admire you, fall in love with you, laugh at you, or even hate you ;) MYSQ is like an amalgam of purikura, DDR (dance dance revolution), and possibly in the future, karaoke, all coming together via mobile network. I like the playful combination of mobility and space. Smart.

2. Sega’s Love & Berry Digital Stage
   Who could possibly resist the temptation of playing on something with a name like “Love and Berry Digital Stage”? This one’s closer to the idea of Purikura: you get to take photos, manipulate them by adding decorative graphics and effects etc. You also get to dance to the music but without the whole fancy sensor effect generators. Once it’s all done, you get your purikura print, which is basically a set of sticker photos but with a QR code at the bottom. Then you can scan the code with your phone to view your pictures and download your video. It sounds all good and fun but unfortunately, Love & Berry Digital Stage, unlike MYSQ, doesn’t allow you to share the outcome with other friends (come on!). Apparently you can only download it to your own phone :( Sega’s selling point appears to be in incorporating anime characters like Naruto.

   view more info about Love & Berry Digital State here

I believe that convergence is an inevitable phenomenon in any facet of life; it is particularly conspicuous in today’s techno-driven society. If we are to find any value in developing new communication technologies, it will only be through convergence - ultimately it will be the convergence between the technology and human senses (some might want to call the latter “spirituality” - I fancy the Taoist idea of “all is one,” so to me, these are talking about the same thing just in different discursive frameworks).

I guess the first technological convergence in the milieu of the mobile phone was between the phone and the user’s computer - transferring contact info and similar activities. Now it’s obviously between the phone and a big network of computers - the Internet. And I find it fascinating how things converge and emerge so quickly in such diverse domains of life in different techno-social contexts.

Join Convergekura, why don’t we? ;)

it started to get really cold here yesterday with some areas reaching -20C. pusan, where my family live and where i am now, is generally one of the warmest cities, so it’s about 3C at the moment. it feels like winter. it feels like korean winter. love it.

i’ve been pretty much offline since i got here. i did bring my laptop but after much trying and screaming, i’ve given up on the whole idea of “let’s get a mac connected to the net” here. korea is pc-chauvinistic to its core; it’s not funny.

so i had to come to a pc bang (pc room) close to my parents’ place. i’ve noticed that many pc bangs have closed down not only in this area but in general, and the existing ones don’t seem to be as popular as before. i wonder what’s happening with the infamous korean pc bang culture. perhaps someone (me?) could write something about this for the special issue of journal of interactive media on gaming in the asia pacific.

anyway, before i go, i’m going to talk briefly about the new “finger-mouse phone” from samsung (SCH-V960/SPH-V9600).

as you can see, there’s a little sensor in the middle of the main navigation panel. This sensor detects the user’s finger movement, and therefore functions as the touchpad/mouse for the phone. smart idea. i’m sure most people agree that so far the mobile interface design in general has been not so user-friendly thanks to the greatly limited navigation capability which forced the user to come back to the main menu (top-level navigation options) to move to a different section and/or use a different function. the mobile touchpad will surely make the mobile phone a lot more userfriendly and fun to play with. another neat function that these phone offer is automatic screen and keypad brightness control, which detects the surrounding environment (how bright/dark it is) and adjusts the brightness of the screen and the keypad. smart stuff.