korea

South Korea is trying a new way to turn public transport green by using a technology popular in electric toothbrushes and razors to power buses and cars.

The country's top technology university on Tuesday unveiled a new electric transport powered by recharging strips embedded in roads that transfer energy through magnetic connections. There are no direct connections with wires.

Vehicles with sensor-driven magnetic devices on their underside suck up energy as they travel over the strips embedded a few centimeters under the road.

"The technological concept behind the idea has been around for about 100 years. We have … Read more

Reunited and it feels so good! Today we cover the ways in which technology allows you to spy (or be spied upon!) Your paranoia is officially justified.

Porn Detection Stick seeks out salacious images

Mobicip: A kid-safe Web browser for iPhones and iPods

Shocking desk devices: “I warned you to stay away from my stuff”

TigerMail – the Tiger Woods app that deletes those embarrassing sex-ts

North Korea’s Red Star OS takes the “open” out of “open source”

What a concept (Big … Read more

It should come as no surprise that Korea, the same country that's building a robot theme park, is planning to send English-teaching bots into its schools. Are we sensing a theme here?

After ongoing classroom trials, South Korea will spend approximately $45 million for an "R-Learning" program that places a range of robotic teaching assistants in 500 preschools by 2011 and in 8,000 preschools and kindergartens by 2013, according to io9.

For now, the terribly cute robot instructors--which teach via voice recognition and telepresence technology--won't take over all classroom duties, but will do things like … Read more

We're not sure if this portends a robot Mickey Mouse and Snow White, but Korea plans to build what is believed to be the world's first robot theme park, the Korea Herald reports.

The robot magic kingdom will be part of a giant residential and industrial complex called Robot Land in Incheon, one of South Korea's largest cities and a major transportation hub.

According to the Robot Land Web site, the theme park will feature all manner of robot entertainment, including exhibitions of robot characters from films and cartoons; reconstructions of robot-oriented movie sets like "Minority … Read more

Capacitive touch screens such as those found on the iPhone are great because they respond well to finger taps. That's also their undoing in winter because users don't want to take off their gloves in the cold to make a call or text a friend. Over in South Korea, iPhone users have come up with an ingenious solution--sausages.

Yes, sticks of meat now double as pointing devices. Apparently, this has caused sales of a certain brand of sausage to go up. Not only do people use the sausage to tap on screens, some even utilize it for a Taiko Drum Master game as seen in the video below.

Last year, I wrote about an HTC patent application that described a stylus that can be used on capacitive screens, thanks to a magnetic tip. Who would have thought that an even simpler solution existed? I wonder if it counts as prior art in case of a patent dispute. … Read more

The U.S. market for virtual goods will reach $1.6 billion in 2010, with social gaming contributing $835 million of that, according to a new report released Tuesday by research firm Inside Network. Virtual good sales were expected to clear $1 billion in 2009, a substantial increase year-over-year.

International sales of virtual goods have outpaced the U.S. rather dramatically, as witnessed by the explosive growth in South Korea and China, which had 2009 sales estimates of $3.5 billion to $4 billion with the market expected to reach $5.5 billion by 2012.

"Inside Virtual Goods: The Future of Social Gaming&… Read more

Breaking news during the show has Verizon admitting to cutting off the Internet access of people accused of illegal downloading. But hey, they don't throttle,they say. Great! Except for cutting off people is really an extreme from of throttling. And also, Verizon isn't getting proof for this, just accusations. The problems with this policy are immeasurable and we discuss them. Oh and Bing may oust Google on the iPhone.

The Times to Charge for Frequent Access to Its Web … Read more

Virtual currency has been one of the more confusing areas of gaming and social networking, with different sites, games and even countries treating currency and goods differently.

South Korea has decided that virtual currency is the equivalent of real-world money bringing to light some very real ramifications for users not just in Korea but in other countries as well.

The ruling allowing "cyber money" is the first in Korea and was based on the acquittal of two gamers indicted on charges of illegally making money by selling goods earned in the game Lineage.

In-game or in-site currency has … Read more

Editor's note: Motorola has since confirmed worldwide availability of the MotoRoi, but has yet to reveal any dates or countries.

Motorola on Monday announced the MotoRoi, its first Android-based smartphone for the South Korean market. Like the Motorola Milestone (Droid in the U.S.) launched in Europe, this handset has a 3.7-inch WVGA capacitive touch screen that supports multitouch. A big difference is the absence of a physical keypad. It also has an improved camera that shoots 8-megapixel still images as well as 720p-resolution videos--an important feature for Koreans as they are accustomed to highly spec'ed cameras … Read more