The Butt Ugly Weblog

This is a very high number, but then again Korea is a leader in internet access diffusion and community building as well probably - wouldn't suprise me if the real number actually was somewhere around that figure.

--Antti, 02-Jun-2005

Yes, the article mentions 15 Million blogs in Korea.

In the Finnish blogosphere one may get the idea that blogging is really small peanuts. But that's only true over here (and a few other countries, Germany most noticeably). In many places, it's HUGE.

--JanneJalkanen, 02-Jun-2005

Joi says that there are 5-6 M blogs in Korea, the rest 10 Million are "hompys", a sort of glorified home pages.

Still, personal publishing using really simple tools, if not blogs.

--JanneJalkanen, 02-Jun-2005

Puhelimet varastettiin jo: se tapahtui tekstiviesteillä. MMS on hupaisa esimerkki siitä, miten tätä prosessia yritetään toistaa. Ja miten siinä epäonnistutaan.

--KariHaakana, 02-Jun-2005

And you don't need any training or patience innovating in the PC-world?

That's funny!

If you insist comparing PC-world and mobile world together try to remember in which maturity stage these are relatively to another.

Mobile world is still young and even the markets are still evolving. I mean people still can't use their mobiles to their full potential (I'm talking about "smartphones" here), only 4-5% can.

Wait this percentage to grow, then it might be a bit easier.

--Henrikki, 02-Jun-2005

I didn't say that you didn't need any patience for innovating for the web. Where did I say that you don't need training or patience? Please read more carefully - saying that "X needs Y" does not mean that "!X does not require Y".

I would claim that most of the people using PCs are not using the full potential on those either. I mean, quite a few people are just using PCs for email, web browsing and games. What does it mean when you say "can't use their mobiles to their full potential"? That's utter crap (sorry to say): you don't need to use a device to "it's fullest potential" if you're, say, blogging! That's geek talk - and that's exactly what I don't like. You cannot say that "well, the users are stupid because they are not using their devices to their fullest potential", because it's not the users' fault. The users don't make the apps and services. Developers do.

I completely agree that PC and mobile are on a different maturity level. And I'm saying that the *reason* why they are on a different maturity level is because of the difficulty of innovation in the mobile space.

--JanneJalkanen, 02-Jun-2005

Kari: I consider SMS to be on par with email: Nice for one-to-one communication, but it's awful if you're trying to do anything else. Depending on your viewpoint, I grant that you could consider it a success story... And I guess you could call voice a success story as well.

But it's still really hard to innovate in the SMS space. If you have a great idea for an SMS service, how would you do it? Could you just throw something together in a few days and see if people like it? Could you do it for free, as an experiment?

--JanneJalkanen, 02-Jun-2005

"And writing software for mobile phones is difficult, and users don't know how to use the services, and optimizing for a small platform is difficult, and... there are many reasons, but the end result is the same: the mobile phone area is really a very hard place to innovate and create new stuff, unless you have the training, the means, and an insane amount of patience.."

Well,..when your rambling people tend to fill the cups themselves when you are not doing it..:)

And I didn't say that people are stupid..I just said that they are not using their phone to the fullest of their potential...because the "mobile-culture" is still youg.

Blogging requires in my mind a little bit more PC-skills than in proportion sending a SMS in the mobile world.

--Henrikki, 02-Jun-2005

How many people, worldwide, have a camera with them in their pocket or handbag today (I mean a camera phone of course)? If 1 per cent of 1 per cent of those people see something they find funny, or interesting or shocking and take a photo of it, that is, go to the trouble of getting close enough, framing it, making sure the light is not too bright and so on, and keep that photo for themselves for a few days, and maybe show it to one friend, then that adds up to a lot of "photographers" and a lot of creativity. Perhaps youre not guilty of forgetting, but it's worth remembering, that "creativity" can't really be defined solely as building software and services. I have no idea what your short "reminder of elements" below means, or what I could do with them if I did (suggestions on a postcard), but I can press click on my camera phone.

--andrew wilson, 02-Jun-2005

I'm not quite sure what you mean... Remember that if you want to do anything with the picture other than watch it, you need a service. Whether that is MMS, email, a neighbourhood photo printer, or Flickr, you need someone to build it.

Just snapping a photo with camera phone does not a mobile service make. It's creative, but it's not a mobile service. You could easily use a film camera for that :-)

(I'm not excluding any kinds of creativity: You need creativity for snapping pictures. You need creativity to build that camera. You need creativity for making services for the photos. I'm just saying that making mobile apps and services is more difficult than doing stuff on the internet, therefore the mobile area is lagging behind. The World Wide Web and the GSM networks are roughly the same age, mind you...)

--JanneJalkanen, 02-Jun-2005

"he's far more eloquent than I am."

He's far more eloguent than what I is n all.

--62.255.32.17, 02-Jun-2005