Google has innovated online geospatial service as like Google Maps with high quality satellite images, street view, oceanic exploration and Google Earth with 3D images and SketchUP in global scale. They were brilliant ideas and many people were impressed.

But, recently Korean web service made another remarkable map services in local scale. Daum and Naver invested many money to build these high quality service too.

Aerial Photography
Daum launched new map features “road view” and “sky view” on January in this year. The image of sky view is converted into high-resolution aerial photography, with the restaurant’s roof, driveway and the sea becoming impressively recognizable. Daum is believed to be spending over 20 billion won to develop the new service, collaborating with SamAh Aerial Survey for the aerial photos and Pix Korea for the street-level images.

Recently Daum also released Map API for 3rd party developers to want to adopt it in their services. You can feel very high resolution aerial photos too.

Panorama Photo
Naver also released panorama photo service for famous spots in Korea. It’s similar with Bird-eye of Microsoft Virtual Earth, but it’s possible to rotate 360 degrees for a look around.

Demo: Seoul N Tower, Mt. Halla

Indoor photography
Daum also released some of demonstration for indoor panorama view in specific building. Now you can see a campus of Sejong University.

If it is adopted in famous tour spot or educational resources in museum, it’s very excellent for people although it’s local based endeavor of online mapping service.

There was big news of partnership between Yahoo! and Microsoft. After the war of acquisition between Jerry Yang and Steve Ballmer, Yahoo got new woman CEO Carol Bartz and she finished remained problems that everyone minds.

Most of news media wrote Yahoo! surrendered to Microsoft and Yahoo’s stock was down. In addtion Jason Calacanis wrote Yahoo committed seppuku today.

But, I think this partnership is very positive for sustainable survival of Yahoo! in long term. Yahoo has very strong properties as like mail, news, finance, entertainment and Flickr. If Microsoft acquired Yahoo in last year, I’m not sure whether most of Yahoo! service could go on not. This partnership is good for Yahoo’s employee although there are some of redundancies in part of Yahoo’s search technology. Ballmer also said this things in conference call.

Ballmer: The deal last year was tailored more towards an investor than an operator. This deal is different, not better. Less upfront payment, and definitely a higher TAC rate.)

Microsoft has strong competency in technology and channel sales, but Yahoo does in web based service that generates good search contents. Both CEO thought Yahoo’s flexibility is very important in future.

Bartz: When we talk about internal Yahoo search that is some of the innovation we are looking at doing. Paid inclusion we will decide on later. We have full flexibility on what to do inside our site. That is the important thing, there is a lot of value there to add search to our properties.
Ballmer: It was important to us to structure the deal to give Yahoo full flexibility (to add search to its services).

BTW, In Korea, Yahoo! Korea and MSN Korea is also minor under 5% (if it’s summed) as like Google Korea. Daum(23%) and Naver(72%) dominated Korean search market. But, in case of search advertise market, Overture has almost of them except Daum’s share of Google AdWords. Now Daum and Google’s contract will be finished in this year for three years. If Daum decides to back to Overture, Korean’s search AD market is Microsoft’s.

Asiajin updated Japanese equivalent of western web services. You may know Japan and Korean are very different from western. It’s different between Japan and Korea too. I listed up them to compare with Japan and western. Leave a comment if you want to know more or think one of these attributions is off.

I) General web services
Google?
Naver

Wikipedia?
Wikipedia Korean (But, most people use Naver Dictionary)

Facebook?
Cyworld

Flickr?
No equivalent (most people used Cyworld‘s photo sharing.)

Digg?
No equivalent (startup? Mixsh? meta blogging site? Daum View, Allblog.)

LinkedIn?
No equivalent (rare business network but, startup? linknow and recruiting site has been developed as like Incruit.)

Twitter?
me2day (acquired by Naver)

Youtube?
Daum tvPot and Pondora.tv

Amazon?
Aladdin

delicio.us?
No equivalent (Daum and Naver were failed and ma.gar.in, a startup also was done.)

dooyoo (price comparison engine)?
Danawa (Now Naver and Daum focused on shopping gateway too.)

Netflix?
No equivalent (most people use VOD site and P2P sharing service as like Fileguri.)

Craigslist?
No equivalent (there is no culture for classifieds in Korea too.)

imdb (Internet Movie Database)?
No equivalent (Korean movie sites were failed now most information were stored in movie section of Naver and Daum)

Wall Street Journal Online?
ChosunIlbo (but, most korean consumed news in portal site in Naver and Daum)

monster.com?
Job Korea

Ebay?
Auction (branch of eBay)

Alexa?
KoreanClick

last.fm?
No equivalent (most of them offers paid music service.)

Technorati?
Allblog

Yahoo! Answers?
Naver Knowledge In

Zynga?
Hangame (It’s high competed market in Hangame, Nexson, Netmarble and Pimang)

II) Blogs
What is the Korean equivalent of Techcrunch?
No equivalent. Bloter offers similar service.

the Huffington Post?
No equivalent.

tmz.com?
No equivalent.

Boing Boing?
No equivalent.

Gizmodo?
No equivalent.

Engadget?
Engadget Korean

III) Web tools and software:
Gmail?
Hanmail, a branch of Daum service.

Google Docs and Spreadsheet
ThinkFree

Blogger?
Tistory, a branch of Daum service.

iTunes?
Melon and Bugs

BitTorrent?
clubbox

WordPress?
TextCube

How about think? If you want to add more sites, please let me know.

Lift Asia 09 and Blog Talk 2009 will be held in Jeju, Korea in one week from 15th to 18th September. I engaged in both conferences as one of supporters.

Lift Asia 09 will happen on 17th and 18th. The conference will be themed “Serious Fun!” and I look forward to welcome you in the spectacular Pacific shore for two days of incredible inspiration and networking. In last year of Lift Asia 08, many people felt this was a special event, offering some of the best ever social moments, incredible speeches and ideas never heard before, and unique networking opportunities with some of the most interesting people in the world.

Blog Talk 2009 will be held in 15th 16th in same place. It is also traditional European based conference continuing with its focus on social software, while remaining committed to the diverse cultures, practices and tools of our emerging networked society. You can submit just 1 page proposal to present your idea and thought till 31th. July.

Venue is very excellent. Actually I lived for 4 years in Jeju island via Google Maps, a famous Korean tour spot. Its nature is very beautiful and one of top world tour spots although people don’t know well.

Jeju is a volcanic island far from 130 km from the southern coast of Korea. The island contains the Natural World Heritage Site entitled Jeju Volcanic Island and Lava Tubes.

Mt. Hallasan, the tallest mountain in South Korea and a dormant volcano rises 1,950m above sea level and 360 satellite volcanoes are around all of island. You can feel different kinds of plants by level from subtropics to cold zone. (Volcanoes were already dead and not dangerous. They are covered by green glasses and trees with some of volcanic outcrops.)

It also has beautiful emerald colored beaches with black volcanic rocks and white sands. I have been in Miami beach in US, but both is almost similar except length of beach.

Recently Jeju island was listed in a finalist of New 7 wonders of Nature that includes top 28 natural spots in the world. If you visit Jeju via Seoul, you can also experience the 3rd. busiest routes in the world.

You can see many photos for Jeju and BlogTalk 08, Lift Asia 08.

Despite of launching iPhone in world wide before 2 years, Korean people still cannot use it. The WIPI was why iphone 3g couldn’t be launched in Korea. It was closed Korean national standard – “WIPI” that must be installed in all mobile devices to personal retails. So Apple rejected this duty for providing iphone, but fortunately Korean Communication Commission (KCC) decided to absolve from an obligation from April in this year.

Before a month, KT (wire phone, wireless internet) and KTF (mobile) were merged. KTF was one of candidates that could offer iPhone and there were many rumors from there. It was hopeful news too. But, there wasn’t good news in WWDC 2009. I couldn’t find the name of Korea in 80 launching country list of iPhone. So many Korean geeks were disappointed and thought another problem is still mobile carrier not to give up their closed mobile business.

Recently there is another hopeful news again. Apple gained a regulatory approval for sales of its iPhone 3G here. Radio Research Agency affiliated with the KCC released to grant certification to Apple for sales of its iPhone 3G A1241 on 12th June.

Its approval is mandatory for telecom equipment entering the Korean market. Not all of the products that received the body’s certification are sold in the local market, but the latest approval shows that “Apple is interested in entering the Korean market,” a KT spokesperson said and KT have been long in talks with Apple to launch its iPhone raising hopes among Korean consumers that the sleek device would come to the local market.

However, the older iPhone 3G may yet hit the local market. Someone are keen to see the possible impact that the iPhone may have on the local mobile phone market, which is dominated by Korean firms such as Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics. Also telecom companies have dominated all of mobile business with relatively expensive price for internet access. So Korean geeks is now alternation of joy and grief because of iphone.

Anyway it’s well going the status of Korean application for iPhone. According to the list of appstore developers, there are over 150 companies and 700 applications in appstore (about 2% per 50,000).

There was successful stories of top 5th game naming “Heavy Mach.” by Korean personal developer Mr. Byun and top 1st free application naming “9-Toolbox” by E2ndesign.

So it boomed up between Korean developers and there is Mr. Chanjin Lee who was one of heroes of software industry and developer Hangul word processor. He has tried to persuade many telecom company, to raise issue about opening market and to promote for many developer to join appstore by helping and consulting them. He also hosted several conference and workshop for iPhone and smartphones including Android, Windows Mobile.

I wish iPhone launches in Korea soon. It will be one of key milestones to open mobile market in here and increase Korean-made applications in mobile world.

I discovered very insightful experienced detection method for dying company via (http://www.infuture.kr/393 -Korean). It may be only Korean company, but I guess most of companies can be applied.

1. Another process is made for a process. (There is not to do any more.)
2. Only CEO is speaking on senior meeting. (CEO blames someone to talk.)
3. No one thinks about new business. (All pressed by urgent business. It’s always.)
4. New business are always hushing up. (CEO is not interested in them.)
5. Ranking is down from second to below third in the market. (Heroes are needed in emergency.)
6. Internal competition is bitter than competitors in the market. (Everyone thinks themselves rather than company.)
7. When a strategy was failed, it finds victim in internal. (Everyone thinks I have to survive.)
8. Toilet is not clean. (Insufficient loyalty to the company?)
9. Everyone believe problems will be solved when CEO was changed. (Foundational problems still remained.)
10. It’s increased that employees want to back to school. (In fact, they want to move another company.)
11. Small reward programs are raised continually. (All medicines prove useless.)
12. Meeting schedules are over half day in everyday. (It has to make a piece of work.)
13. Employees blames there are rare educational programs. (How to find themselves?)
14. Communication with instant messaging despite of near person. (It’s tired to face-to-face.)
15. When idea is suggested, someone comments “Is there another company to do?” (Although creativity is the motto of a company.)
16. A manager often says “I have no authority to do.” (Because all rights reserved in CEO.)
17. Cigarette butts are increased in smoking room. (Boring or painful.)
18. A thickness of report paper is heavier and thicker. (a formality overwhelms contents.)
19. There are many people folding their arms in meeting. (It means I hate to listen.)
20. When CEO(Manager) is absent, everyone is active. (Everyone feel cheap in normal.)

If your company is applied in from 15 to 20 items, it’s very risk, you’d better go out company.
from 10 to 14, risky, you have to request the change.
from 6 to 9, normal, but you’d better monitor.
below 5, it’s good.

How about your company?

Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 and higher starts to support W3C’s Geolocation APIs developed by Google.com based on Gears Geolocation API. It offers your privacy information such as IP address of your PC or Wi/fi to Google server for recognizing your position under only your agreement.

You can see it simple demo.

If you have GPS enabled device, geolocation returns your location directly to web sites. This is very useful in mobile web service to find coffee shop, restaurant and friends via iPhone and PDA with GPS. But, if you don’t have this kind of device, Firefox sends your information to Geolocation service providers as like Google and get your position from its server.

Firefox doesn’t save your information or send them to any other 3rd party. If you grant to get your position, your location informations may be sent to your web site as well Google’s geolocation server. But, Firefox also doesn’t send the informaton of web site that wants to get your position to Google.

Firefox user can change default setting for Geolocation service from Google to another 3rd party that supports W3C Geolocation APIs. You type “about:config” in address bar and change “geo.wifi.uri” from “https://www.google.com/loc/json” to another. Now there is no services to do.

For more information, please refer to Geolocation in Firefox

There is my concern for privacy. I knew there was a heavy privacy discussion in WWW2009 and refer to Privacy Diffusion on the Web: A Longitudinal Perspective that shows Google has been the strong collector by their family’s cookie and javascript.

Google’s Geolocation service means that Google can collect and organize user’s information related to position such as GPS position, personal profiles such as address, mobile information to get correct IP-address database. In my experience, the user profile can make probabilistic database between IP address and real address. Google can be real big brother?

I’m also heavy RSS reader with over 200 feeds and it’s hard to track many famous blogs. Strangely I found sometimes that good blogs were hidden with no influence and rare good qualified posting. So I added them and instead removed newspaper-like blogs that publish many articles per day to keep proper numbers RSS feeds following up.

Recently how to find good feeds is very important to me. Now I’m studying in Ph.D course and one of my professors focused on this issue and made feed search engine so called Feedmil.com. I used this for a month in closed beta and found some good feeds in my favorite topics.

Feedmil.com is a long tail of feeds to find good feeds for given topics. It analyzed millions blog feeds in the world and classified by popularity, quality, relavance and blog media type such as podcast, video, photo and micro blog (twitter) and social media(Facebook) and so on.

The search process itself can be refined by way of a provided slider that will let you set a popularity range from “Surprising” to “Well-known”. By this way, you will have a chance to check feeds that few people have heard about, and you can also discover popular feeds that for some reason or the other you had failed to notice before.

Feeds exist in everywhere in social network sites such as Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed as well as blog. Feedmil’s approach is similar with Technorati’s, but it focused only feeds that easily can be tracked.