SeanChoe : blog

social media, movies and technologies

My first public video interview

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I've been privileged by @davidthlee who is the co-founder of web interviewing service Wetoku, to have an interview with him online. He invited me as a friend of @aplusk, :) and one of the Twitter users in Korea. It's a little bit embarrassing because it was the first time for me to record me speaking in English, but I had really fun and it was an unique experience for me. Thank you david, and I think now I got the fun of Wetoku! :)

ps. I set my mic volume too high so David's voice will be barely heard, so please be patient folks.

ps2. Congratulations for your wedding on 31st October David!! :D

ps3. the fist 100 people to sign up for Wetoku with invitation code "@seanchoe" are eligible for a free Wetoku pro trial, just tweet your username! (in courtesy of David)

A Twitter Party in Seoul

I told you, there are many Twitter real-life meet ups this month in Seoul, and here is the another one.

A Twitter party was held at Hongdae V-hall on 10th September, Organized by @hur (Hur Jin Ho), the CEO of Neowiz Internet. Mr. Hur is also one of the most famous and active Twitter users in Korea.

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This Twitter party was the biggest tweetup in Korea so far. 200 to 250 people have gathered in the place. I met so many great and influential people there. And it was pretty fun to find people I know on Twitter as their profile pictures!

Many Tweeples volunteered to organize the party together, so it could be very successful. For me it was very great experience because I made a speech as a "1 minute speech" speaker. It was embarrassing and fun at the same time.

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me making the "1 minute speech"

There was band performances also at the end of the party. and they gave a mug cup as a souvenir.

After the party, @richardmin , @mirwing and I grabbed beers together and talked a lot. It is always the best part to make friends and hang out with them.

I give appreciations to all the volunteers for the party, and hope to see all the people at the next Twitter party!

Movie review : Drag Me to Hell

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I've wanted to watch this movie for a while because I read lots of good reviews about this movie. The movies I know from the director Sam Raimi was just the Spider Man series, but after I watched this movie, I found out he has a very unique style of making movies.

Drag Me to Hell is a horror movie, but in a different point of view it's very funny somehow. There are many frightening and disgusting scenes, but I didn't feel bad about them. they made me excited and enjoy the movie. This movie was just like a roller coaster. It was not serious at all, just make the audiences to be freaked out all the time. I think it's very good movie to watch with friends or a lover in a theater.

So, if you are hesitating to watch this movie because it seems to be too scary and creepy, just open your mind and enjoy the movie. Don't take this movie too seriously. That my only advice and I recommend this movie.

Great time at Twitter / SNS forum

These days there were many Twitter real-life meet ups in Korea. The number of Twitter users in Korea is increasing fast and they are very eager to get together in person apparently.

Last Saturday (9/5) There was also a Twitter & SNS forum at Hangyang university. I've attended there too. (as you can guess) This forum has been organized by a few people on Twitter including the famous news anchor Kim Ju Ha.

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In the forum a number of speakers had made their speech. Most of them were pretty helpful. What I was specially impressed was that a pastor joined the forum as a audience and he made a small speech about current situation of the Korean IT and broadcasting field. I think it's very nice phenomenon that religious ministers are being interested in new technologies and social networks.

The most exciting part of the forum this time was the unofficial afterward party. I stayed at the place and talked with another people after the forum, so that I could join the small party at a pork meat restaurant. And I had so unique opportunity that I could talk to Kim Ju Ha anchor face to face at the table! :)

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Me and Kim Ju Ha anchor

I also met so many great people in the forum. I realized again that the most important thing is always people. Hopely they will be my power in the future.

Google Open Social meets Cyworld

Last Friday, I took a day off and attended Dev.Square seminar by SK Communication.

Dev.Square is a open source development environment which Cyworld (Korea's largest social network service) provides for the developers. It's powered by Google App Engine and OpenSocial.

I've attended the App Engine / Open Social seminar on 25th February this year also. Mickey Kim and Chris Schalk from Google were speakers back then, and they came this time as well. Mickey was trying to make contract with Cyworld since then, and it finally came to end with a great result.

All the people from Cyworld, Google, and we developers were all very excited about the synergy between world's biggest internet company and Korea's largest social network company. People were very passionate, so we talked and discussed a lot.

In my opinion, Korean people are not very familiar with the open social, or social network. Cyworld is a huge social network site, but the system in it is pretty exclusive. So I think Cyworld's decision this time was very meaningful and important. And it's very good chance for Korean web environment to leap one step forward.

Cyworld has very powerful point to attract developers. It's the virtual currency system. Cyworld has it's own virtual money called "Dotori" and Korean people are very familiar to the concept. And they're buying it a lot already. So if developers make good apps and success, they can get the reward enough by Dotori.

As one of the speakers said, it's the start, not the end. We can make a great fertile playground for ourselves, developers and designers.

About Snow Leopard

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I've purchased the new Apple Mac OSX "Snow Leopard" on last Friday (the day it was released) and installed in on Monday. Now I'm using it for 4 days, And here's what I felt about it.

There's no big changes in appearance. QuickTime has been upgraded slickly, and few sensitive UI changes on dock and finder, and other basic apps. That's pretty much all.

But if we go inside, as the New York Times journalist David Pogue descried, Apple did some unique upgrade this time. instead of adding new features, they actually shrank it. They compressed and lightened the previous OS so that it became more fast, and occupy half the size.

In my thought, Apple's products are getting close to "perfect". So there's nothing to be improved at this moment, they're just polishing it on and on. MacBook did the same, and now the OSX did. I think it's very positive way to make products.

And other one thing that I found out and surprised was, that Apple's OS doesn't have any anti-pirating method. They sell the software, and the customers are allowed to install the software to only 1 Mac, but if they intend to, they can install it to as many Macs as they want! It's so called "honor system". They just believe customers. And they even sell the Family Pack which can be installed to 5 Macs! I think those 2 packages are just same! It was even a little shock to me. I also bought the software for $29 (45,000 won), but I'm not regretting it. Actually I'm proud of it. Maybe that's the power of Apple.