Gangnam- Dae Ro, the main street of Gangnam, has undergone something of a rejuvenation over the winter. (Much to the chagrin of those who live here, having to trudge through mud for the last 3 months.)
Changes have included the expansion of the footpaths, Power boxes have been tarted up, new hand rails added and the removal of street vendors (which, despite the loss of atmosphere and good street food, has made navigating the street infinitely easier).
개선전 (Before) & 개선후 (After) shots stolen from here.
One of the interesting and more elaborate additions to the main street has been 22 (!) so called 미디어 폴s (Media Poles) subtitled with “Ubiquitous Media Street Gangnam”.
People would be forgiven for thinking that the Monolith (and it’s brethren) from 2001: A Space Odyssey had landed in the middle of South Seoul.
These Media Poles incorporate a number of flat screen TVs for advertising and a touch screen providing all manner of useful area information and diversions.
I had afternoon tea with long-time friend of The Bimbo Karen M. and had the new camera in hand this afternoon so we took a Media Pole for a spin along the Ubiquitous Media Street as it were:
Apologies for the shakey cam, and a first real effort at iMovie.
Don’t forget there are 22 more of these along the street, and the point was not lost on Karen M. that the money used on these might have been better spent somewhere else, on resources for our respective schools for instance, but The Gangnam District Office is our employer, so of course we couldn’t possibly comment….
Some neat technology at work here nevertheless. The games and photos and things are perhaps predictably Korean, but the Map of the area (Provided by yahoo.co.kr more info here [Korean]) is particularly useful (albeit in Korean) and the information on the art exhibit that is on “The Poles” at the moment was interesting. Interestingly the email photo thing didn’t work – but I have a feeling that was user error rather than anything else.
You can find more video of the Media Poles (I just like saying Media Poles) here [Korean], and of course in person in Gangnam. (Exit 7 Gangnam Station).
PS: Rob! How do I embedd a YouTube video in WordPress???!!
15/03/2009 at 11:26 pm Permalink
To embed a video, I think you have to turn off the text editor while you cut/paste/edit the code. Just like blogspot – if you want to see the real code you need to turn of the WYSIWYG. Try this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NopuJ_OYjsk
Hope it helps~
16/03/2009 at 7:20 am Permalink
You can either switch to html mode and embed it that way, or you can download a plugin that will let you do it.
16/03/2009 at 9:09 am Permalink
Nah!. Tried it both ways as described above. Fairly frustrating as I am hardly a N00b!
16/03/2009 at 10:32 am Permalink
I guess they didn’t need the trees anymore.
16/03/2009 at 7:58 pm Permalink
The email photo thing was working on one of the machines today, but some of them seemed to be having issues. I liked being asked to “leave a massage’, though rubbing the machine didn’t seem to do anything.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewskorea/3358910197/
17/03/2009 at 5:05 pm Permalink
Hey there, Stafford. switching from the WYSIWYG “visual” setting to the HTML setting and then cutting and pasting the embed code has usually worked for me.
Did that not work?