KoreaCrunch

Microsoft’s Mix07 is coming soon. In last Microsoft Tech Summit, Loke Uei and Clark Butler showed a demonstration of QR code with Windows Mobile to guide conference rooms in Mix07.

If you participate in Mix07, you’ve better learn it.

Along with the announcement of Eric Schmidt in Web 2.0 Expo, Google has acquired Tonic Systems, a San Francisco and Melbourne-based company that specializes in Java based presentation creation and document conversion. It is not one of web based officeware software such as Writely, Zoho and Zimbra. Tonic has offered free PowerPoint viewer and PPT conversion tool made by Java technology.

There is a few informations about Tonic Systems because Google shut down its homepage after announcement. It seems that Chris Nokleberg is a core member of Tonic system. His blog has explained Tonic’s technology since first product release in Feb. 2005.

If you want to test its product, you can download TonicPoint Viewer in Windows, Mac OS X and Linux under Java 5 and Java Web Start.

There is a similar company. It’s just Thinkfree, a Korean based web office software company. Why does Google choose Tonic Systems rather than Thinkfree? It is almost perfectly compatible with file formats of .ppt, .doc and .xls and only supports them.

Also you may be surprised at similar user interface with Microsoft Office. They have made own Java based swing interfaces looking like windows applications and analyzed office formats by reverse engineering. Basically Thinkfree has tried to be alternative of the officeware market in online. So it was very heavy with a lots of functions not to be suitable in online environments.

But, Tonic Systems made core libraries only to make a document and convert presentation formats. It’s very light-weight to be usable to Google Apps at once. Google already has Google Docs & Spreadsheets to make and edit another file formats except the presentation format. So it seems that they want to get core technologies only to treat presentation formats.

Thinkfree was known based on Silicon Valley, but its stock owner is the HaanSoft, Korean officeware company. Its product has widely used in governmental organizations and educational institutions against Microsoft Office. There were many rumors about a negotiation for acquisition between Google and HaanSoft. But, it seems that Thinkfree chose independently surviving by cooperation with Naver and offline office with Zimbra etc. I’ll keep a watch the walking of two companies. Who was right?

Google has continually magnified its influence in Korea after release of establishing Google Engineering Center. It started the first public relationship to serve Google gifts and get inquiry of interview from thousand developers in annual Korea Java developers conference in Feb. 24. Many developers stood one row in Google’s booth to get interview requests. It was very popular rather than any other booths such as Sun Microsystems and IBM Korea.

Google also announced Mr. Lee, Wonjin will be local head for Korean business. He is a former CEO of Adobe Korea and was also the local CEO of Macromedia Korea before aqusition with Adobe. It may be chosen why he knew internet software industry very well and has experiences to manage local business.

As well Google assigned Mr. Wonkyu Cho, a former CTO of Opinity Inc with social reputation service and Dialpad.com, early VoIP service in US from Serome Inc. But, two of them are not native person in web industry of Korea. Some people worried about passive tactics although Google has a few market share in here.

To succeed in the competitive Korean market, Google has hit on all cylinders over the past few years such as setting up engineering center, recruiting and interviewing top engineers to substantially increase its work force from the present level of between 50 and 60. In March, the company also held Google night to explain the status of recruiting by inviting many bloggers and engineers.

Also Mr. Dennis Hwang, Google’s webmaster visited Korea again in April. He is well known as a logo designer in front page of Google. He concentrated attentions of bloggers and press although he was second visits, but because he is the most successful person as a Korean in Google. He announced Google will employ local web master to improve local supports. It includes many counties as well Korea.

He also said that Mr. Eric Schmidt will visit Korea for keynote speaking in Seoul Digital Forum in May and emphasized Google thought the Korea is very important market because of many highly connected broadband users compared with its population.

According to a survey conducted last month by local Web log analysis data provider Acecounter, Google Korea has a 1.68 percent share of the domestic internet search market. It means there are a lot things that Google has to do still. Suffering from low recognition, lacking in detailed search results, and losing out to local competitors are negative comments that the famed internet portal Google is not used to hearing, but faces in the Korean market.

Because of these reason, Google have strengthened publicity activities on let know its brand to many people such as press event leaning general showmanship or traditional approach such as planning TV advertisement. Whereas IT bloggers want to see technical innovations to fit korean tastes and interests by local employees. In recent article what google’s enemy is by Smartplace, the famous IT team blog many people replied it is their intension not to adopt local service rather than korean’s specific monoculture.

Interests related to OpenID has been increased in Korea. After myID.net, the first Korean OpenID provider, two providers were opened personal-driven identity service. One of them is IDpia.com by Initech that is very famous of the PKI based security company. The IDpia want to differentiate itself from other services with relationship between OpenID and real-world authentication such as mobile one-time password, personal certification with consumer credit information companies and national PKI system.

The other is IDtail.com by Ahnlab that is also famous of Internet vaccine software company. Mr. Chulsoo Ahn, the founder of Anhlab has studied about venture investment in Silicon Valley after retirement. It seems for him to give a spirit to his company to make Web 2.0 start-up services. In fact, Ahnlab built a new team for start-up services, and made Pumfit.com, a digg.com style news site.

Another guys made OpenDaumID.net that converts Daum AuthAPI to OpenID. Using this, you can have own OpenID with Daum’s ID system. It’s an one example of mashup with OpenAPI and OpenID.

Also some of start-up services let user to use only OpenID such as Me2day, for micro-blogging and SpringNote, a personal WIKI and Lifepod, Ajax-based calendar. You can find more web sites to support OpenID.

Early IT movers in Korea are surely interested in a concept of Identity 2.0, but major change will be done if it is supported by big players such as Daum and Naver. I think some people think that OpenID will be another platform service in future. Yes, it is, but users cannot help choosing more trustable providers, and the best thing among them is roaming possible desktop identity system such as Microsoft CardSpace and Firefox OpenID.

After mash-up opportunity sponsored by Daum DNA and Naver OpenAPI, it will be increased raw materials for mashup food. Startup companies make their own OpenAPIs and share them to all developers.

• SpringNote APIs: http://dev.springnote.com/ You can add and edit your own pages in SpringNote.
• Me2day APIs: http://codian.springnote.com/pages/89009 You can post articles to Me2day.
• Lifepod APIs: http://www.lifepod.co.kr/api You can add your schedules and sharing them with each others

It’s an evidence to prove that many startup services think the open platform is very useful and important to gather user’s data and distribute them. I hope more mash-up examples with brilliant ideas to mix them.

Tomorrow the Web 2.0 Expo will be held at Moscone Center in San Francisco. Over 50 korean people will be participated in this event. It was only three korean people in Web 2.0 Conference in 2005. How many people are interested in Web 2.0? It’s incredible.

After first introduction of Web2.0 in 2005, many people have started to discuss Web 2.0 through various blog communications, seminars, conferences and books. Also many it was made new start-up services introduced by this blog. Major portal companies such as Daum and Naver made user-participating services following Web 2.0 philosophy. Some people criticized Web 2.0 is only marketing term without substances and new things, but interests were increased.

Mr. Taewoo Danny Kim, one of famous bloggers started Web 2.0 Journey donated by his blog readers with the promise of returning the favor with good content on his blog. He planed to interview many famous Web 2.0 persons in his travel. It includes interviews of professors of Cornell University, stories visiting Search Engine Strategy Conference and Web 2.0 Expo. If you meet him in Web 2.0 Expo, please show your interests.

Also there are many people in this event including Openmaru, Wizardworks, Naver and Daum. Please connect korean peole in there. I’ll enjoy their live blogging although I cannot join that.

Update. Many korean attendees are making live blogging on spot. (All contents written in Korean.)

• Daum’s Web 2.0 Expo in SF
• Taewoo’s Web2.0 Journey
• Openmaru’s Web2.0 Expo
• Yahoo! Korea’s Web 2.0 Expo
• Ahnlab’s Web 2.0 Expo
• Wizardworks Web 2.0 Expo Live

Lifepod is Ajax based calendar service such as Google Calendar developed by Mr. Kibae Shin. It targets Korean users that want to use localized personal calendar service. Its idea is not unique, but one guy just made it as his own proto-type and many bloggers have been interested in his development story.

It offers ajax based address book, RSS reader, scheduling and data sync between PC and PDA. It also is possible sharing of schedules between friends added by invitations.

Lifepod is based on OpenID, so Openmaru Studio started to support facilities such as web server and network infra because of partnership between myID.net and Lifepod.

Another challenge for the search market was active by Naaroo.com, Attention search engine. It is based on Onnet that made Fish, a desktop RSS reader and Egloos, blog service acquired by SK Communications.

It was famous to join some of early search developers, Dr. Younghoon Kim and Dr. Younghwan Cho in Korea. They participated in the development of Naver’s early search engine. As you know, Naver with social and expert database has over 70% market share in search not to be broken by Google and Yahoo. After first challenge of Chutnoon, it is second one with only search engine functions. (The Chutnoon was acquired by Naver in 36.5 million dollars.)

In fact, it focused on blog search ranked by attention degree such as bookmark, vote and involuntary click by users. So it reflects social trends and interests in real time, but Google Pagerank is difficult to do. It collects various attentions from RSS reader, referrer URL and alliance of attention database. They made own algorithm named by “xMind” model to do that.

As followings are brief description to explain Naaroo’s thought.

- Evolution of Ranking Algorithm

- What’s Naaroo?

- Service Model of Naaroo

- xMind Model

- Life cycle of contents in Naaroo

I was glad to hear their new challenge against concrete market. Always fresh idea was good. All photos are from itviewpoint.com.