Seoul Photo and Imaging Show 2008

Written by admin on April 12, 2008 – 3:26 pm -

All you shutterbugs and digital imaging enthusiasts better scoot off to the Seoul International Photo and Imaging show which is going on at the COEX. The show which kicked off Thursday (10.04.2008) ends this Sunday (13.04.2008). Admission is free to the public, at least I think it is since I just signed up by presenting my business card. I’ve also seen whole families including children getting in.

Most of the major players are represented in the show such as Nikon, Canon, Sony, Sigma, Olympus etc. 

The COEX is accessible by car and there is ample parking available but can be expensive, W2,000 (US$2) for the first 30 mins. and W1,000 (US$1) every 15 mins. A cheaper alternative would be to take the Subway and get off at Samseong Station (Green Line).

 


Tags: , ,
Posted in Seoul, South Korea, Tech | No Comments »

Unwired

Written by admin on April 10, 2008 – 4:23 pm -

Today is my day off and I’m posting this wirelessly from a coffee shop. I could be using any of the numerous free WiFi hotspots that litter Seoul but this time I’m connected to the net by Korea Telecom’s Wibro network.

South Korea is one of the first countries to commercially launch Wibro or WiMax as it is officially called. So what the heck is Wibro anyway and why do I need it? In a nutshell Wibro is a wireless data service which allows you to connect to internet with more bandwidth than current 3G, in theory this will provide clearer voip, video streaming, surfing which I will take up in a future post.

With the help of my Korean colleague I signed up online and received my uicc or sim card in 3 days. There are various devices that are Wibro capable such as Laptops, USB Wibro modems, UMPC’s, Smartphones and PMP (Personal Media Player), my device is the Samsung Q1-Ultra , it’s basically an Ultra Micro PC that runs Windows XP. 

The install was virtually painless for me, I downloaded the KT Wibro Connection Manager for my device from the KT website and installed it, after the install I shutdown the UMPC. I then inserted the sim card into its slot on the UMPC and powered up.

Upon rebooting the KT CM (Connection Manager) started up automatically and indicated that it was connected to the Wibro Network.

Now that I was online, first order of business was to check my new connection speed by firing up the browser and going to my favorite speedtest site.

I got almost 3Mbps on the upload and 1Mbps on the download with a latency of 195 ms. Not bad at all considering most wired broadband connections in South East Asia max out at 2Mbps with the exception of Singapore and Hongkong. Comparatively you get about 300 kbps - 700 kbps on 3G, HSDPA or CDMA EVDO.

Nuff of this geeky stuff, the only reason I posted this is because a Wibro connection allows for a truly wireless broadband experience and will be the foundation of all the other cool stuff I’ll be posting later on.


Tags: , ,
Posted in Seoul, Tech | No Comments »

Dirty job

Written by admin on April 7, 2008 – 6:34 pm -

Unlike the United States you can’t just chuck your food scraps into the garbage disposal or trash. Apart from European countries South Korea can be counted as one of the few countries in Asia that segregate their garbage religiously. If you live in an apartment complex there can be as many as eight bins separating glass, plastic, styrofoam, cardboard, tin and aluminum. Apart from that there are separate bins for used cooking oil, food, fluorescent tubes, bulbs and batteries. Finally there’s the dreaded food waste bin which I really hate especially during the summer when one whiff of its contents is simply revolting. Being the lazy bastard that I am, I still went on and put my food scraps into small little plastic bags ang tied them off but still mixed them with my trash. That was up until my cleaning lady told me that this was unacceptable and that I would have to seperate my food scraps from my garbage.

I’m not all that lazy, I do segregate waste such as cardboard, plastic, glass etc. Realizing that it was inevitable that I would have to throw my stuff into food waste bin, I had to find a way of making that chore more appealing.

My colleague suggested that I get a food waste drier, basically what this little gadget does is it sucks out all the moisture of whatever you put in it’s 5 liter capacity compartment by circulating hot air and spewing it out from the two filters behind which I’m guessing filters out the smell. This process takes about 12 hrs. So if you dump your scraps into it’s compartment it should be completely dry and hard as nails the next morning leaving no smell (well maybe just a tad) when you open the front door and making the chore of throwing out your scraps less gross.

My unit just got delivered today at my office and I will be putting it through its paces when I get home tonight. Inventions like these make life better for lazy bastards like me. For more information check out their webpage.

 

 

 


Tags: ,
Posted in Living, Seoul, Tech | 4 Comments »

A quick look at Anycall’s Haptic

Written by admin on April 5, 2008 – 11:36 pm -

I was at the COEX mall today and had a chance to have a quick test drive of Anycall’s (Samsung) latest phone to jump on the iPhone bandwagon. I had 10 mins. to play with it so don’t consider my observations as an extensive review. Good news first, the Haptic can be switched to English. I would consider the UI to be good but nothing to write home about, you can drag and drop apps onto the desktop to create shortcuts. It had a number of games installed but I only played with a pair or dice by shaking the phone. I wanted to test typing a text message on the Haptic and much to my surprise and disappointment, the Haptic and on onscreen version of a mobile phone keypad as opposed to a qwerty keyboard that I was expecting. I also felt that scrolling was not that responsive but it could be due to the screen protector that was attached. I didn’t have a chance to see if the Haptic was capable of playing MP3 files or if you had to use a proprietary format such as SK Telecom’s Melon player which is a deal breaker for me. I’ll be looking more into this phone in the days to come and post updates.

 

 


Tags: , , ,
Posted in Seoul, Tech | No Comments »

Apple Bluetooth keyboard pairs with Q1-U

Written by admin on March 31, 2008 – 8:24 pm -

I finally got my Apple bluetooth keyboard to work with my Samsung Q1-U! I had already given up, after reading so many threads on numerous UMPC forums that the Apple’s bluetooth keyboard won’t pair up with Widcomm’s BT stack. Not having work today I decided to give it another shot and googled ‘apple bluetooth keyboard widcomm’ and found a blog with instructions on how to pair the keyboard with the Q1. I was a skeptical and a had my reservations of having to tinker with the registry especially since I had just finished sorting out some issues with my bluetooth headset which had been giving me grief all morning. I still went ahead and followed the clearly written instructions, restarted my Q1 and it worked! I’m glad I didn’t purchase Logitech’s fugly bluetooth keyboard and mouse. 


Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Tech | 4 Comments »
Newer Entries »