Markets and Hobbies

In Korea there is a very strong culture of early adoption and hobbyists for a number of market types. One in particular is that of photography and in certain areas of Seoul you can't go a few minutes without seeing a top end fully professional DSLR. In this market however there is also a lot of diversity and products like Lomo are quite well established. Similarly film photography is still strong.

It looks like I may do some work looking at this trend a bit later.

In Sinsa the other day, a father with a big camera and a daughter.

Living in Context

Recently while shopping at the local KAIST convenience store I noticed the clerk was getting exercise by power walking around the small store.

The KAIST Convenient Store with woman running too fast to be photographed

I think the prospect of making our living spaces and working spaces share strange unexpected values is pretty interesting. I should also add that recently in my Ubiquitous Hacking summer class we did a little thinking about combined multimode spaces for living and working. My prototype was based on the prospect of incorporating emptiness to reduce functional specificity. A little like the discussion of bathrooms I noted last time I was travelling in Korea, this concept is also highly motivated by the seeming emptiness and functional agnosticism of many traditional Korean destinations.

A simple room for work and living biased on the lack of objects to create flexibility

Cheese and Asia

A Korean made Brie. I had no knife so I used Chopsticks

Since I first started coming to Asia years ago I have always found that cheese is dealt with interestingly here. As many people know China and Mongolia have had fermented milk from early on. Nowadays  milk and yogurts are consumed on mass, however the cheese market is still small and almost exclusively premium. However, most people in Asia I meet seem to really enjoy cheese and this is no secret, as far as I can tell, to the local food industry. One Chinese friend to whom I introduced Goat cheese to in Australia commented that he wished to eat nothing else for the rest of his existence.

Packaging from one of the most common milk suppliers here. I think it is rather nice and that the name Maeil almost communicates Milk. Maeil or 매일 actually means everyday in Korean

In Asia one can buy foreign cheeses at a relatively high price but they are almost never used in foods in restaurants. Various dishes in China and Korea are starting to have cheese options but the cheese used is almost exclusively low fidelity cheddar which I think is made of plastic.

This is an amazing dish which I will comment more on later. What is important at this point is that those rice cakes are full of the previously mentioned cheddar.

A few years ago I thought it would be interesting to start an Asian cheese company which could provide for the local need and introduce more variety. Here in Korea there is a company (Sangha, a brand of Maeil) doing this and selling reasonable Camembert and Brie, still overpriced, but much less than the imported options. I tend to still buy French or Australian products as the flavour is superior but it is interesting to see the effort. This company has also released a Camembert spread which comes in a bottle, sadly it is slightly aerated.

Camembert in a Bottle. I think we should explore the possibility of making this really nice, it seems like a good idea.

In any case, I have a few contacts in this area but should get more investment before tackling Asian cheese. Any ideas?

Thinking Presentations

A screen shot of one of my presentations from a few years ago. Made with Keynote

I am sitting here looking over my colleagues shoulder, he is building a site map and a bunch of content ideas for a new website. Surprisingly however he is using powerpoint to do this not some specialised app. Interestingly I have in fact used a similar tool, Apple's Keynote, to do the same sort of work in the past. So, I was a little puzzled about why this actually happens.

Various obvious reasons come to mind, one being that in our work here at KAIST we have presentations almost every day and hence use presentation tools all the time anyway. I in fact use Keynote even to prepare ideas for discussions where no presentation will actually be made.

Another factor however, is the fact that presentation tools as they exist today are a little like WYSIWYG interfaces for building idea frameworks and hence can be used in a lot of settings. I think this could be taken a few steps further.

On a related note over the past half dozen years I have thought about the possibility of a computer interface that is more like a presentation at all times. So, everything you do is sort of always ready to be seen, but also always valid and useful to communicate.

I think with presentation like tools we do, or should get the following 3 basic modes; idea collection, organisation and communication. These each have various core features that I think are important and I list bellow.

1. Idea Collection
1. Data Dropping - ability to quickly add data
2. Quick Capture - ability to create nice text or other media fast
3. Sketching - this includes typical sketching and the sketching in the more abstract sense
2. Organisation
1. Data Types - ability to take data and group it or render it or do something to it which is useful quickly. Like Smart Graphics from Powerpoint though I think they could do a lot more with that idea. 
2. Trend Visualisation - a way to see how things are flowing and to design flow
3. Communication
1. Data Pulling - ability to take data out quickly, easily, and conveniently - Keynote is exceptionally good at this. 
2. Pretty Core - things have to naturally be presentable, designing a presentation style is a whole different project, it should be made easy
3. Communicative Features - features that actually enrich the communication and storytelling value. Perhaps Scott McCloud can say more about this. I really like the idea of non slide based communications and I often emulate this in my presentations. 

I think perhaps what I really want is not actually a presentation tool but more generally a thinking/communicating tool which would be really great for designers of various sorts as well as probably many other people. I have looked at a lot of tools branded in this space and I think they get some things right but nobody makes me sing. Some I like are Compendium and PersonalBrain but these are really tailored for a slightly different process and are absolutely not as pretty as required. 

I know there is a lot more I could write about these things but perhaps I will later. Ideas, additions or suggestions?

Animals at University

Here at KAIST we have some animals; Several geese, one duck (who pretends to be a goose), a collection of rabbits, the occasional dog randomly in the corridors of the design building, and various other dogs, cats and birds. Here I have linked to a gallery of examples.

Click to see big and map and other junk. 

What I can see in Korea

This is my dorm building at KAIST. In the background are apartments outside the university. 

So when I got here I wanted to start a blog relating to my stay but I have had a few reasons not to and thus it has been delayed. In any case, I am going to start documenting my stay a little more readily, and feel free to remind me to do so more in the future.

My school is quite small, about 6000 students I think, though the campus is quite large given that number.

View Larger Map

A map of KAIST.

Spelling Google

Spelling the number. More info. Mostly unrelated this post.

I was reading through my old unread items in Google Reader and came across this amazing piece I had set aside to read and never got around to. It is like a Google state of the union address and I really think that it offers not only a lot of insight but a lot of context into what we know and have, and why. In any case, I suggest everyone read this and then read it again to make sure they did not miss any of the interesting details.

I also should mention, I quite like the title, "From the Height of this Place," which gives me ideas, unrelated to how tall I am.

What makes what we want

This is obviously and Android phone that I have been working on. It has solar on the back, e-ink on the sides with a possible advertising model for free service/media. Touch based of course and being who I am I am excited by the potential of PixelQi. The case is snap together PolyCarbonate or something so it is relatively continuous and we get some interesting optical properties, as seen in the render. The screen size is based on the current HTC G1's screen (320x480), in this case of course we do not have any other buttons etc. so the device ends up being quite a lot smaller.

The model is not that good so I am going to do a fresh one as soon as I know a little more about the details.

I have not decided where to put the camera so for now it is in the middle on the back.

Any suggestions or ideas would be great.

What makes what we want different from what we have and what we think is available?

USB + TSR + Bidirectional Grip + Power Switch

This is just an adaptation of the Zen Data device I was thinking about earlier. I have added a TSR socket, AKA headphone jack, so that it can have audio output. (in looking for a documentation of the standard I found out they seem to be technically named TSR) I also added a Switch but I am not sure if that is really necessary. No sign of controls yet. I think buttons are too hard to design well (I agree with Apple on that one) so for now we should just assume that it know what music you want to listen to, or you can give me a better idea in the comments.

Update: Thanks to Nick Kemp Greenhood for pointing out that it is really TRS not TSR. Woops - Dyslexic.

More Guessing and Shiny Stuff

So I got an idea the other day which I think is not yet finished but I have made an initial model anyway. Here is an early stage render of the back. Any guesses to what it is?

Zen Data Storage

Thinking about what it would be like if USB sticks were simple.

Also thinking about putting back a few features, potentially Multi-Directional Positive Grip as can be seen in the Benchmade knife below, and also considering how an LED and tow point should be incorporated.