The newest trackers are electronic

When the Lee family’s 80-year-old senile grandfather would wander out of their house in Myeongil-dong, eastern Seoul, the family often had trouble finding him.

So when a new location detection service began in January, the Lees were one of the first to sign up, said a family member who asked not to be identified further. The senior Lee went missing one day, and the family searched for him for three hours. The family called the location service provider, which sent out a couple of its security members.
They found Lee in less than an hour.

While location detection services have been used in the past mainly by official agencies such as the police, more and more citizens are paying for commercial services.
The detection services range from people finding, including children and senior citizens, to pets, automobiles and even expensive products.

The Korea Location Information and Communications Co. offers a location information detection service for individuals and corporations.

Its technology is based on a small chip, which is placed in a small plastic container or embedded in a wristband, the firm said in a release.
The company uses signal towers to narrow the site of the chip to a certain area, and then uses a handheld monitor on the ground to narrow down the target.
The company developed its service in September and began commercial service earlier this year. The service is only available in Seoul and the metropolitan area now, but the company plans to expand it this year to metropolitan cities, then begin nationwide services next year, the company said.

As of the end of March, the company had about 4,000 subscribers. KLIS said in the release that inquiries jumped threefold after a young child was kidnapped and murdered in Incheon in March.

Due to privacy issues, however, cell phone service providers will not allow “anyone” to look up someone else’s cell phone location.
Prosecutors and police can only trace a person’s location with a search warrant obtained from the court; the general public can only seek information on another person’s location if that person has been officially reported missing.

Minors, however, can be monitored by their parents, and such services are growing in popularity as the rate of child kidnappings increase, cell phone companies said.
Even if the child is not using the phone, the location can still be detected as long as the phone is turned on because the phone continues to communicate with the nearest base station.

All three of Korea’s cell phone service providers offer location detection via cell phones.
SK Telecom’s “child safety service” sends a message to the parent every hour, with a message of where the child is. Parents can also designate a certain region as a perimeter, and be alerted if the child leaves that area, according to a release from the company.
KTF also has a similar service call “Child Search.” In April, 13,000 people subscribed to this service, which can send the location of the child to up to four family members, the company said in a release.

Parents can also trace where the child has been. For human rights reasons, such child-monitoring services are only available for children under the age of 12.
Location detection is also being increasingly used to keep a tab on pricey objects.
Cosmos Corp., a musical instrument dealer, last month began a service for customers who want to keep an eye on expensive instruments, the company said in a release. The price for the location tracing service starts at 9,000 won ($9.72) per month. The service is also linked with a home security and bodyguard service.

A flat, square plastic device about as long as a thumb is placed within the instrument’s case. If the instrument is missing, a security agent will search for the instrument, responding to signals that can trace the object to a 1-meter (3.3-foot) radius, according to the release. Users can also confirm the location of the instrument around the clock through the Internet or their cell phone.

Zeus Guard, a private bodyguard company, uses detection services to monitor its cars and agents that are on duty. In the past, agents had to call in for their precise location to be determined, the company said in a release.

LG CNS tagged vehicles transporting important computer equipment when it had to move from Suwon, Gyeonggi Province to Seoul.

Beginning in July, regional governments plan to use location detectors for the welfare of their residents.
Suwon city plans to offer elderly people who live alone devices that not only reveal their location, but have buttons that the user can press to call an ambulance.

By Wohn Dong-hee for JoongAng Daily

Readers on the move making switch to e-books

Falling sales of printed books don’t necessarily mean people are reading less. In fact, with better technology in cell phones and portable media players, the market for electronic books and audio books is finally taking off.

Electronic Book Korea, a non-profit consortium, said that the electronic book market in Korea was only 55 billion won ($59 million) in 2005, but jumped to 140 billion won last year. The association predicted in a recent report that the market will keep growing, doubling to about 300 billion won this year, which would amount to 11 percent of the publishing market.

Electronic books, generally downloaded from the Internet, sell for less than half the price of print books. They can be viewed in two different formats ― one has digital text formatted to whatever device the reader is using, the other appears the same as a printed book, with the same pages and cover. Many digital books have adjustable font size; some support features that allow a reader to highlight text or type comments on the side.

In addition to portable media players, the industry sees cell phones as the next popular device for reading e-books. KTF, the second-largest mobile phone service provider in Korea, is launching a book service in partnership with Booktopia beginning today. Users that download an electronic book to their cell phone can share the same files on their PC or personal digital assistant without extra charges. SK Telecom began the service slightly earlier; the only downside of downloading books via cell phone is that the user must pay for connection costs while the book is being downloaded.

In addition to e-books, the market for audio books is also growing. Audio books are MP3 files with a narrator reading the book. The service is popular in Europe and the United States but is only starting to catch on in Korea. Last month, software firm Inticube Corp. began audio book services for mobile gadgets. Inticube now offers about 1,000 titles and hopes to add 90 books each month.

Demand for these digital books is increasing because people are becoming more mobile. According to a recent report by the National Statistical Office, Koreans over the age of 10 spent 100 minutes every day on the move as of 2004.

“Going to public libraries is difficult for office workers, which makes electronic book services convenient,”said Lee Lim-kyong at Pyeongtaek City Library. She said that the library began e-book services in 2003, but they are just now catching on because of cell phone downloading.

Booktopia.com has one of the biggest electronic book databases in Korea, with about 100,000 e-books, but its contents are still very limited.

By Wohn Dong-hee for JoongAng Daily

Getting carried away with new portables

Companies are always trying to find new categories in which to lump consumers, so that they can get a sense of who they’re targeting when developing and selling new products.
The National Statistical Office released a survey last week describing six groups that companies need to keep their eyes on. They said that these “blusumers,” a mix of the words “blue ocean” and “consumer,” were new consumers in a market that had few competitors.

What with so many people using small digital products, it wasn’t surprising that among the newer types of Korean consumers, those “on the move” were one of the six groups. The statistical agency said that “moving” blusumers usually owned at least two or three small digital products.

Statistics showed that Koreans above the age of 10 are spending more time on the move every day. Marketers think that they will need more entertainment as they commute or travel.

Most adults, many youths and the elderly already own cell phones.
In addition, other small gadgets such as MP3 players, portable media players and portable game players such as Sony’s Play Station Portable (PSP) or Nintendo’s DS Lite have become part of the everyday baggage of modern Koreans and many of the brand-names are at the high end of the market, suggesting this is an area where fortunes can be made.

Electronics products are not the only hot items that are being customized for busy people. Companies have begun to design unique products that merge multimedia functions with fashion, such as T-shirts with pockets that are a perfect fit for an iShuffle MP3 music player or strapping speakers to suspenders when doing exercise, like hiking or jogging.

On Auction, a Korean Web-trading site, sales of these items have gone up. You can see MP3 sunglasses (sunglasses that have earphones attached and will play MP3 music files), MP3 wristwatches, and speaker pouches on sale here.
The market for these mobile consumers does not end at giving them a good or unusual way to carry their devices.

Smaller units, such as one sticker company that makes very feminine “stickers” for Motorola Razr phones and other accessory makers also have a chance to grabbing a share of the market.
“The whole ‘digital wear’ thing used to be just for nerds or people into sports, but now that digital products are very commonly carried around, they are becoming more popular,” said Jeon Hang-il, Auction’s fashion manager.

By Wohn Dong-hee for JoongAng Daily

Some spamming can save lives

Joo Ah-young, a 15-year-old with a mental handicap, was separated from her parents on an outing, and was missing for 15 days before the police decided to take another approach to the search. An SMS message with her photo was sent to people in Seoul and Gyeonggi province. Two days after the message was sent, a call came to the police from a security guard of a shopping mall in Dongdaemun, saying that he had found Ms. Joo.
Now that most people, regardless of age or social status, carry cellular phones, they are being used as a form of broadcasting messages that involve social welfare or national security.
Finding lost children is one example. SK Telecom’s mobile child-seeking service is operated jointly with the National Police Agency and the Korea Welfare Foundation.
Subscribers of SK Telecom, which is the largest mobile service provider in Korea, receive text messages that come with photos. Users can choose not to receive the messages. They can also make a free phone call to report any sighting.
Text messages are first sent to people who are around the area where the child was first reported missing, and then the radius is expanded if no one responds. Similar to child-finding services, there is also a mobile broadcasting service to find lost senile elderly citizens.
Mobile disaster broadcasting services are also available, through the National Emergency Management Agency’s agreements with SK Telecom, KTF and LG Telecom. Typhoon warnings, for instance, tell people of extreme weather conditions and relay messages if they have to evacuate their homes. Last summer, this network saved lives when torrential rains hit the mountainous regions of Gangwon province and caused landslides and floods. In the past, such announcements were made through television or radio, but many people do not keep those devices on all the time and the broadcasts do not cater to specific regions.
For Koreans traveling abroad, service operators offer special alerts if any emergencies are occurring in their area. Conducted in cooperation with the Foreign Ministry, people using global roaming service can receive a text message that explains the situation and gives the number of the Korean embassy in that country, or any other numbers that the person can call for help.
“If one is in a foreign country, some emergency may be happening and one may not know it, because of language problems. This service was used in the British bus terror incident and Southeast Asian tsunami,” said Kim Hye-jin, a SK Telecom spokeswoman.by Wohn Dong-hee