The Ansible

Article on Cyworld

> http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,68361,00.html?tw=rss.TOP >
> Koreans Find Secret Cybersauce
> By Jonny Evans > > <> /news/feedback/mail/1,2330,0-1326-68361,00.html
> Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,68361,00.html > 02:00 AM Aug. 08, 2005 PT > There's more to online social networks than matchmaking, and South Korea's Cyworld is showing the way.
> The online service blends homepage building and social networking with a host of other online activities, including Sims-like role-playing.
>
> Owned by South Korea's SK Communications, Cyworld is a cyberphenomenon. According to the service, Cyworld jumped from 10 million to 13 million users in 2004. A quarter of the country's 48.2 million people have signed up, including 90 percent of the 24- to 29-year-old age group, the company claims.
> "I was very reluctant to use Cyworld at first, very against it," said user Charlie Shin. "I said it was just a Friendster copy. Now, if someone were to shut down my page tomorrow, I'd have to hunt them down."
> Users get their own page, a virtual living room called a minihompy where they can create diaries, publish images, network, host legal background music and more.
> Members personalize their minihompy with virtual objects they purchase from Cyworld, and enhance it with up to 10 tracks of background music they can buy and play for visitors. Universal Music International sells 100,000 tracks a day though Cyworld, according to Adam White, Universal's vice president of communications.
> Basic services are free, but Cyworld's online stores accounted for 80 percent of Cyworld's $54 million revenue in 2004, selling such digital goods as virtual furniture, page backgrounds and avatars.
> Like Friendster, Cyworld lets users create networks based on degrees of closeness. But Cyworld is Friendster-plus. As well as websites and blogs, Cyworld has its own version of the popular game The Sims. It also gives users unlimited image hosting, the ability to update pages by mobile phone and special-interest bulletin boards.
> The service has its own currency called dotoris (acorns) and its own slang and social obligations.
> It is highly addictive. Many users call themselves "Cyholics," spending hours every day in Cyworld -- enough user time to produce 3.8 billion page impressions a week.
> "The word Cy in Korean means 'relationship,'" said Cyworld executive Rick Kim. "Cyworld, therefore, literally means 'relationship world.' It underscores our commitment to creating an environment where wholesome, friendly relationships are created and maintained."
> Cyworld user Shin said Korean social customs contribute to Cyworld's success. "Everyone (who visits your page) starts leaving you messages," said Shin. "If you don't write back or leave a (guestbook) message on their site, they get upset."
> In Korea, not responding in a timely fashion is seen as rude and upsetting. The end result is a "vicious and unending cycle of messages," Shin said. "You can literally spend all day on the site writing everyone a message."
> Cyworld uses real names for users' pages, so if people meet at a party, it's increasingly likely they'll swap Cyworld addresses, not phone numbers.
> "Instead of asking for a phone number or e-mail address, people ask, 'Do you Cy?'" said user Jennifer Park.
> Australian artist Emil Goh said he is "totally in love" with Cyworld because of its sophistication.
> "Its interface is a model of how other online services should operate," he said. "It's also a great way of learning about Korean life, as most things are photoblogged, right down to what people have for lunch."
> Goh is working on a Cyworld-themed art project: photographing users' real rooms from the same angle as their > minihompies, and presenting images of the real and virtual rooms side by side. Some of his images are currently on exhibit in Copenhagen, Denmark.
> Goh and Shin both said Cyworld's networking and communication features, combined with the personal nature of the pages, make the service ideal for friendships and dating.
> Cyworld "has brought the country closer together, (helping users find) old friends and (stay) close to the friends you've got," said Shin.
> Cyworld is spreading across Asia this year. It launched in China in June 2005, hopes to reach Japan in October and has Hong Kong and Taiwan on its to-do list. Cyworld U.S. is slated to launch in early 2006, said Kim.
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> Alex Ferrara > Bessemer Venture Partners > 1865 Palmer Ave. Suite 104 > Larchmont, NY 10538 >
> Tel: (914)833-9100 > Cell: (917)770-4600 > Fax: (914)833-9200 > alex@bvp.com > Skype: alexrferrara >

Upcoming.org

http://upcoming.org/

beats the crap out of evdb.com

Businessweek Best of Tech

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/bestof/editorpicks.htm

Who's the bigger geek: Bill Gates or Napoleon Dynamite? by ZDNet's Dan Farber -- What would a big Microsoft event be without a video spoof, and Bill making fun of himself a bit. This time cult movie geek "Napoleon Dynamite," gets into a hand slapping contest with Gates and beats him, earning the right to run Microsoft. Fun photos from the video (which Microsoft usually doesn't release for whatever legal or other reasons) with [...]

Seagate Acquires Mirra

Seagate Acquires Mirra

News about Mirra's acquisition by Seagate

Seagate Technology purchased Mirra Inc. Wednesday afternoon, adding storage appliance technology for the home and small office.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but were not materially significant. Mirra's 34 employees will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Seagate, effective immediately.

The acquisition gives Seagate a NAS and wide-area-storage solution for the home and small office, the next step in the evolution of consumer hard drives. Once a product designed solely for the PC chassis, Seagate's storage portfolio now includes include external drives and portable options, but lacked the network-attached storage option that rivals such as Western Digital developed.
[snip]

This just a month or so after AOL acquired Xdrive.  It looks like there's a growing amount of interest in home backup services.

Motorola E815 hack:

http://howardforums.com/showthread.php?s=9fba14031fe6a618f4b4e0067e257c3f&t=674803

Allows high-speed file transfers and dial-up networking over bluetooth.  I can finally transfer pictures and MP3s to my phone over bluetooth.  The bluetooth DUN is also nice, albeit a bit slow.

YubNub.org

Yubnub.org.  A command line interface for the web.  Great tool made by Jonathan Aquino as a project for the 2005 "Rails day" 24 hour programming contest.  Only problem is that the growing amount of traffic is starting to slow it down.  Try searching for "shitty".

This is perhaps the most amusing (and scarily accurate) posting I've seen on MMORPGs.  If you don't know what an "MMORPG" is, don't worry. It's a geek term, like "e-mail" used to be a geek term. For now let's just say it's the most instantly gripping, involving and demanding entertainment technology ever invented. The addiction rate appears to be about twice that of crack Cocaine. There are 10 million MMORPG users in the world and their population is doubling every two years.

Housing Maps

The IAB newsletter had an interesting blurb on a site called housingmaps.com the other day.  It's a site that combines the Craigslist real-estate section and Google Maps to show the location of available housing in a given geographic area.  The site was apparently launched in April and is a great example application of the Ajax-driven Google Maps.  I personally think it's too bad the NY Times doesn't expose its real-estate listings as an XML feed or web service.  They've had a similar feature on NY Times for a while but it's no where near as elegant and scalable as Google's mapping software.  Speaking of which, I continue to be amazed the a company like MapQuest can compete against Google in this area.  MapQuest hasn't made any visible improvements to it's offering in years.  What was a really innovative service six years ago has become a sluggish ad-heavy mess of a service IMO.

It seems like location-based services and consumer-oriented mapping technologies are becoming very popular.  In spite of offerings from MapQuest and Yahoo Maps, a number of heavyweights have gotten into this game in recent years.  Google's innovative local search, widely lauded for its innovative use of the Ajax, was recently augmented by its acquisition of Keyhole.  Google also recently announced a deal with Stanford's CityBlock Project which will provide ground-level 3D images.  This is accomplished using a combination of low-flying planes and camera-equipped group vehicles. 

Microsoft finally disclosed details of its virtual earth project (the same project Gates was so enthusiastic about after his Think Week), widely believed to be augmented by data from Pictometry (Pictometry also provides images to the U.S. government).  Microsoft has been focused on mapping software and services for several years, starting with MS MapPoint in the late 1990s (?) and the web service MapPoint.NET back in 2000 (?).  Amazon's A9 service now offers 2D photos of buildings on U.S. city streets.  Zoto's Geoproject is another interesting site that allows users to browse and share digital pictures from various confluence points around the globe.  Last month O'Reilly hosted it's Where 2.0 conference, focused on all that is new and interesting in the world of cartography.

There are also a number of startup companies in the space such as Geosim and the now defunct Syncline which provide mapping and GIS-related services.  I did some work with with the guys at Syncline a few years back and the last I checked a couple of them were working as GIS consultants at Traverse Technologies.  I should get in touch with them to see what they've been up to as of late.

So the question I'm left with is whether we've gotten to the point where mapping becomes a substantial sub-segment of what has become the "search" killer app.  It's clear that competitive dynamics between Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Yahoo and others have gotten us to the point where we now have some impressive mapping platforms upon which a range of applications can be built.  One question is how much of the value of applications built on this platform will accrue to the app providers vs. the platform providers.  Assuming Microsoft and others can get to Google's level of technological sophistication I don't see why the mapping plumbing won't become close to free.  Google already offers a free Google Maps API (Microsoft has offered this for several years) subject to some limitations on page views, a requirement that any derivative service be freely offered to end users, and a notice that they reserve the right to put ads on the map in the future.  Come to think of it this is pretty much an open source version of the service - a pretty innovative idea for a company whose revenues are so heavily dependent on advertising.  I can imagine how it has the potential to take Adwords to the next level of geographically-targetted marketing and higher CPM/CPSs.  More to come on this later...

Other interesting sites - Oodle.com and the Oodle Blog.

Stavis the Wookie

Star Wars outing with the Infinicorp crew up in Boston back in May.  Rob Stavis decided to show up as a wookie.

Overall I thought Star Wars III was pretty good - much better than the first two.  There were a number of extremely cheesy scenes and a healthy dose of bad acting, but overall I thought it was a good ending to a great series.  The last 45 minutes was especially good. 

Rob as the wookie along with an amused Chris Dixon.