Korean players first in world cyber games

The 2006 World Cyber Games ended last week in Monza, Italy, with Korea emerging as the winner of the most medals.
The event was held over five days during which about 700 players from around the world gathered to “battle” for cash and prizes worth $462,000. The finalists had been selected through national championships that took place between March and September of this year. The tournament took place at the famous Formula 1 racing circuit ― the Autodromo Nazionale di Monza ― and kicked off with a huge concert and opening ceremony featuring the entrance of the participating countries.
“This is an occasion for promoting harmony and mutual respect among all participants, as well as the countries they represent,” said Yun Jong-yong, co-chairman of the World Cyber Games Committee and the vice chairman and chief executive officer of Samsung Electronics Co., the major sponsor for the event.
The tournament consisted of six PC games and two console games. The PC games were FIFA Soccer 2006, Half-Life: Counter-Strike 1.6, Need for Speed: Most Wanted, StarCraft: Brood War, WarCraft 3: The Frozen Throne and Dawn of War: Winter Assault.
The console games available were both for the Xbox360, the two titles Dead or Alive 4 and Project Gotham Racing 3.
Most of the medals won by Korean teams came in the StarCraft: Brood War competition, where Korean players stole the show. Choi Yeon-sung, a member of SK Telecom’s T1 earned the first gold medal by beating Park Sung-jun of MBC Game’s Hero two to one. Jeon Sang-wook, another T1 player, won the bronze medal, winning over a Chinese player. The three players stood on stage to receive their medals and waved a huge Taegukgi, the Korean flag.
Korea’s fourth medal ― also a gold― was won by Ryu Kyung-hyun in Dawn of War.
Russia just missed coming in first in the grand finale, with three medals under their players’ belts. Enileeve and Nikolay Frontov won the top two medals in the Need for Speed tournament, followed by Victor Gusev, who won a bronze in FIFA 2006.
The third-placed team was Germany, with two golds in FIFA 2006 and one bronze in Dawn of War.
Next year, the World Cyber Games will go to the drizzly city of Seattle, Washington. It will be the second time the event has been held in the United States; in 2004, San Francisco was the first U.S. city to host the event. This year’s World Cyber Games was the 6th WCG event.

by Wohn Dong-hee

Metallic handsets: the latest phone trend

Metal ― it’s the latest fad in cell phone design.
From late last year to early this year, the key word in cell phone marketing was “color.” Handset manufacturers focused on unique colors such as lime, magenta, and orange, to appeal to consumers. Now, however, the focus has turned to materials.

The “LG Shine” is a fully metal handset with a liquid crystal display mirror on the front that becomes a screen when the phone is activated.
The phone, unlike its predecessors, is not gilded with metal, but made of metal itself.
“This handset is set to capture the imagination of mobile phone users who crave the perfect balance between design and technology,” said Bae Jae, executive vice president of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company’s Global Business Division. “It has already captured the imagination of the media and consumers in Korea with its real metal magic mirror screen, and we expect the same reaction prior to its worldwide launch.”

LG’s Shine took the metallic trend started by Samsung and Motorola a step further. Metal phones require advanced technology because otherwise they would create magnetic fields, bog down wave transmission rates and make the handset heavier.

Samsung Electronics’ “magic silver” phone, released last month, was made of magnesium, also a material uncommon in the production of cell phones. As of last week, less than a month after its release, 30,000 units had been sold.
The magic silver phone was the first handset in Korea to use magnesium gilded with other metals such as copper, nickel and chrome. Analysts noted that it was the use of metal gilding that made metallic phones more popular. Because metals could potentially make the handsets heavier, these handsets only used a thin coating of metal on the front side of the handset to give the phone a metallic look.

“The material of a cell phone is a detrimental factor in deciding the color and touch of the product, in addition to its intensity,” an analyst said. “Now that cell phones are a fashion item, handset makers are opting for state-of-the-art materials which will enable them to make thinner, stronger and more colorful phones.” by Wohn Dong-hee for JoongAng Daily

Marketers going straight-to-Internet

Marketers looking to hawk their goods to young Internet-savvy customers are putting their video clips online. In the past, the companies would put the videos on television or in theaters before putting them up on their Web sites.
Samsung Electronics recently filmed a four-part drama series with the popular actor Lee Jun-ki. The company said yesterday that the video clips ― initially shown only online ― had garnered more than 1.5 million hits as of Friday, only 10 days after they were posted on the Web site for Samsung’s Anycall cell phone brand. On major portal sites, popular Web content is considered anything with more than 1 million hits.
The 50-second movie clips portray Mr. Lee as a university student using features on his cell phone, such as a portable TV and an MP3 player. to win the heart of a young woman.
This was not Samsung’s first video clip. Previously, the firm used music video dramas, also posted on the Internet, to promote its cell phones.
“You have to have fun, savvy content that can attract the younger generation to come to your Web site and look at the content. Also, young people use the Internet as their main medium, and so we expect that new content-related marketing will set the trend for promoting products in the future,” said Song Pyeong-gwan, a Samsung spokesman.
Samsung is not the only company making use of Web videos as teasers.
In “BMW Meets Truth” the singer Rain stars in a music film that included BMW cars. The video clip was made available through a special Web site.
Liquor maker Jinro Co. also has a unique online movie clip promoting its soju brand, Chamisul.
Although this clip does not feature any famous actors, it is still very popular because it parodies the U.S. television drama series C.S.I., which portrays the scientific investigation of crime scenes.
The Chamisul version is titled C.I.S., standing for each syllable of Chamisul. In the video clip, Western actors ― obviously cast for their resemblance to the actors in the real C.S.I. series ― perform “scientific investigations” in order to find out what makes Chamisul so different from the other soju brands.
The short clip contains images of the investigators in a bamboo forest, collecting the ingredients that go into Chamisul. Later, they are shown in a lab, concluding with a very non-C.S.I.-like image of having dinner and toasting each other with glasses of soju to congratulate themselves on the success of their investigation.

by Wohn Dong-hee

Robots rock at international expo in Korea

Machines are grabbing center stage at Robot World 2006, the first international robot exposition to be held in Korea.
The event at COEX exhibition hall in southern Seoul featured EveR-1, a young female humanoid robot, playing the role of commentator for the opening ceremony. Hubo, another humanoid robot with the face of Albert Einstein, stood next to Commerce Minister Chung Sye-kyun for the tape-cutting.
EveR-1’s sister, EveR-2 Muse, stepped on stage to make her debut as a singer with the ballad “I will close your eyes,” but unfortunately some parts in her neck had been damaged after her morning photo shoot with the press, and she had to stand stiff-necked and lip-sync to the music with minimal arm motion.
The five-day event, hosted by the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy, includes exhibitions by 80 Korean and foreign enterprises and conferences with participants from 30 countries.

“Robot technology has developed in spectacular fashion over the last 50 years, and it has found application in nearly every aspect of our lives, from industrial healthcare and hazardous jobs to housework. The robot industry is expected to become a strategic high value-added industry,” Mr. Chung said.
“Thanks to a public that eagerly adopts cutting-edge products, there is a very high interest in service robots nationwide. The Korean robot market is expanding more than 100 percent every year and to sustain the robust growth, the government is actively implementing a government-wide master plan so that every household will be able to have one robot by 2013,” he added.
As the main event, the International Robot Industry Show will showcase robot developers and vendors. The types of robots involved in this exposition are diverse, ranging from household robots such as robot vacuum cleaners, to education robots, manufacturing (industrial) robots and futuristic robots, such as androids.

Also included in the venue is the International Robot Contest. Competition categories include soccer, basketball games and survival games. Contestants, of course, may only be robots. About 900 teams are participating in 22 categories.
The robot exposition also encompasses a number of academic events, such as the Korea Robot Conference. Prominent robot experts will speak about the development of intelligent robots and the status of technology development in advanced countries.
As for EveR-2 Muse, the team of researchers from the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology, led by Baek Moon-hong, which developed EveR-2 Muse, said the debutante would be “fixed” within the next couple days.

by Wohn Dong-hee for JoongAng Daily