Korean Internet service provider KT has revealed that it is looking for a share of profits generated by smart TV sellers, after it switched off Internet access for smart television sets in the country.

As a report from Reuters explains, the ISP is concerned that the demands of Web-connected TVs will put significant strain on its network and affect its service. The firm already cut smart TVs’ access to the Web and now, with products tipped to grow significantly, the company is looking to develop an approach to monetise the products, as KT executive Kim Hyo-sil explains:

We want the value of our network recognised by (Internet TV) platform operators and want to create a business model that enables us to share profits generated from using our networks.

Those Internet-TVs can be likened to heavily-loaded trucks dominating network highways and slowing down the overall speeds, and the issue only becomes more serious as the Internet TV market grows.

Fellow Korean firm Samsung, which is planning to introduce revamped smart TV sets this year, is not in agreement wit KT’s proposal, as a company statement revealed:

Samsung is a pure manufacturer making TVs, smartphones and computers. It’s not logical to demand network fees from a manufacturer that makes products using networks.

In addition to Samsung and other ‘smart TV’ offerings, Apple is said to be planning to unveil its own TV — which may well be gesture and voice activated — while Google has its own offering, and Samsung is also committed to carrying a Google smart TV.

KT’s request is not unlike one that Japanese operator NTT DoCoMo made to Google, after revealing that certain Android apps were placing strain on its mobile data service. The carrier requested that Google reduce the activity that certain voice-calling apps places on mobile networks.

When YouTube hit the internet in 2005, it changed the way we view videos online. Suddenly Web users could search for almost anything and watch related videos instantly. Now viewing video has become an everyday activity and users all over the world spend billions of hours watching online video.

I have been fortunate enough be part of a closed beta realease for a new video service called Image2Play developed by Korean startup Enswers. As soon as I used Image2Play, I knew straight away that it had that ‘wow’ factor which could definitely revolutionize the online videos space in the same way that YouTube has. I took a closer look at the company to find out more about Image2Play and its other services.

Enswers was founded five years ago and the company’s name is a combination of ‘entertainment’ and ‘answer’. Essentially, the company aims to provide entertainment-related solutions and products, and is deeply involved in online media and search technology. Enswers recently announced that it had been acquired by major operator KT, but the company has been busy developing several products over recent years.

Image2Play

Image2Play is Enswers’ latest service which searches for videos via images on a webpage. Operated through a browser plug-in, the service automatically takes all images displayed on a webpage and runs them through its database of millions of videos in a matter of seconds. If the image returns a match, a play button is displayed in the top-right corner, after which the click of the button instantly plays the video match. Originally only a Chrome plug-in was available but recently support for both Internet Explorer and Firefox was added to the closed beta.

While using the closed beta, I was surprised by just how often I used the service. Whether browsing a news site or blog, once the play button pops up, it is very hard to resist clicking to watch related video content. Though videos appear to only be a minute long, it is enough to give you more information on the image or simply watch a good portion of the video it came from. Enswers also plans to allow embedding in blogs so users who do not have the plug-in installed can still view videos via the service.

Worldwide, the number of users uploading content continues to grow and finding videos or clips of copyrighted material has become a lot harder these days due to sites like YouTube clamping down on unlicensed uploads. Enswers has solved this problem by going straight to media outlets from the beginning and it has agreements to prevent any breach of copyright.

The extensive amount of video available from major networks, cable channels and even movie channels is very impressive. The benefit for broadcasters lies in publicity and revenue, as Enswers also intends to add marketing and purchasing features — users could, for example, purchase a DVD series or movie from the matching search result.

The domestic market in South Korea is Image2Play’s primary target market but the service has already picked up considerable interest internationally. Earlier this year, Enswers was chosen from a number of teams from Korea, China and Japan to demonstrate at the AsiaD conference in Hong Kong. As the video below shows, COO Sherman Li showed how Image2Play technology can also be used in conjunction with mobile devices.

Other Services

Enswers’ other products have also helped the company’s success. In early 2011, it acquired popular Korean entertainment site Soompi, a service that allows users to subtitle episodes of foreign TV programs and dramas so a wider audience can enjoy them. Enswers revamped the website using its own media technology. The site has been hugely successful worldwide drawing approximately 6 million visitors per month, boosted by the growing popularity of Korean dramas and music around the world.

One of the company’s earlier services – enswer.me – is a video search tool which utilizes a number of different video sites including YouTube, Veoh, Hulu and other international sites such as China’s Youku, Japan’s NicoNicoDouga and Korea’s Pandora.tv.

Searches through the service cross-reference to filter out irrelevant duplicate videos, showing the number of overlapping videos that exist across the services. According to its website, Enswer.me uses “proprietary ClusterRank search algorithm and VideoFuse large-scale clustering technology” to do this.

Enswers’ products and technology are also licensed to other businesses, such as Platform-V, a P2P platform which monetizes downloadable content while ensuring copyright of content is protected. Other solutions such as audio fingerprinting technology and interactive TV with smartphones are also listed as solutions that Enswers offers.

Though Image2Play will initially be aimed at the domestic market first, PR manager Kim Ju-yeon explains that Enswers sees the service as having worldwide potential:

“Of course all companies compete in the market, but going global is one of our main goals and we can reach it with our technology.”

➤ Enswers | Image2Play

Apple has passed the landmark of one million iPad sales in South Korea, where its tablet device is a considerable distance ahead of rival Samsung’s efforts on its home turf.

The statistic, which is reported by the Korea Herald, makes Apple the country’s top tablet vendor, with sales of the original iPad and iPad 2 estimated to account for 70-80 percent of the nation’s market. Perhaps Samsung needs to work on its advertising in the country, the latest of which is inspired by Apple but seemingly not working on Korean gadget buyers.

Tablets are a growing sector in Korea’s technology space, where smartphones are still becoming established among mainstream consumers. However, Apple is said to have seen an encouraging 700,000 iPad devices sold last year, since introducing the iPad in April, and momentum has increased in the new year as it has gone on to hit seven figures.

Local press sources, cited by the Korea Herald, suggest that there may in fact be more iPads active in Korea. The official figure accounts for devices sold in the country alone, however the actual number could be “far more” due to early adopters who bought devices from overseas channels before it launched in the country.

Further details reveal that the WiFi-only versions of the iPad are the most popular, accounting for two-thirds of all sales, suggesting that, for now at least, most Koreans avoid running the device on carriers’ data networks.

The gulf in sales will frustrate Samsung, which has always taken pride in performing well in homeland. Indeed, the company is so sensitive to the Korean market that it reneged on plans to fight the launch of the iPhone 4S there.

Tablets have been a key part of the international legal disputes between Apple and Samsung with Germany the most recent  battlefield. A German court last week dismissed Apple’s attempts to push for a sales ban on the modified Galaxy Tab 10.1N, which itself was introduced to avoid a sales ban following a successful legal challenge from Apple.

Recent developments follow Samsung’s unsuccessful attempt to overturn a ban on the original Galaxy Tab, which it was looking to sell again in Germany. Apple was the first to up the ante in the European country this year, as it filed new lawsuits against 10 smartphones and 5 tablets in Germany in January.

Both companies are set to introduce new tablets to increase the competition in the space in 2012. Samsung is rumoured to be announcing an 11.6-inch device, which will become the world’s largest tablet, at some point this year, while Apple is strongly tipped to launch the iPad 3 next month.

Apple fans in Korea have even more reason to be cheerful — other than the imminent arrival of the iPhone 4S — after the government lifted a ban preventing Apple including games in the country’s App Store this morning.

Korean Apple can users now get their hands on games which had been blocked for almost two years due to concerns from the country’s Game Ratings Board about the content of games. To get around the block, many users opened US or other international iTunes accounts but now they are able use the regular, Korea-based store.

More significantly, the block was an obstacle for Korean game developers many of whom claimed that the government was holding back the industry in a nation of gamers.

Currently there is not a huge selection of games made in Korean for the domestic market apart from a few in the ‘entertainment’ section of the App Store, but that will soon change. Now that the block has been lifted, competition is expected to heat up between mobile developers, some of who have already prepared products for the store when rumours of a lifting of the ban emerged recently.

The news comes at a significant time for Apple in South Korea as the iPhone 4S is due to be released in the country on November 11.

Additional reporting by Jon Russell

According to The Korea Times, “During the second decade of the new millennium, robots are expected to replace English-speaking teachers here in Korea.”

This would leave approximately 25 to 30,000 English teachers currently employed in South Korea staring at the uncanny valley of unemployment.

Named by Time as one of the “50 Best Inventions of 2010,” meet the job terminator: South Korea’s new English-speaking robot. The government, wanting to keep South Korean students competitive in English, introduced the robot teachers into 3 schools in late 2009 with plans to have them in over 20 schools by the end of 2010. The red lipped, humanoid robots are commonly referred to as “Engbots.”

“By around 2015, robots should be able to help teachers in English classes. By 2018, they should be able to teach on their own while communicating with students,” said Kim Shin-hwan, an economist at the Hyundai Research Institute in The Korean Times.

Don’t expect a global robotic rollout anytime soon. Costs of production, deployment and human training will slow the process, particularly amid a recession. But overall cost is an interesting fact to consider: unlike human teachers robots don’t need salaries or benefits.

So how will the very best teachers versus the very best programs measure up?

“I expect the very best teachers will be able to work in conjunction with programs to produce the kind of interactions with students that are the most valuable. And as long as the programs don’t work towards mediocrity by taking on unions we will be a lot better off than a lot of the teachers we have today,” says Debbie Myers, Master Gardener and one of Cape Cod’s finest science teachers (also the world’s most excellent mother).

As much as I love robots, I don’t think they will ever fully replace human teachers. My best teachers growing up weren’t the ones who automated the learning process, they were the ones who inspired me to love learning. Human teachers need not fear for their jobs as long as we live in a world that still values education, the learning process and the roots of inspiration.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” -Albert Einstein