The Korea Herald

Gmail stumbles as Google services disrupted

Google's widely used free email stumbled Friday as some of the Internet giant's services were disrupted by apparent software woes.An online Google Apps dashboard indicated that trouble rippled through Gmail, Google+ and an array of the company's other services.Google did not disclose the extent of the Gmail glitch but the brief outage was believed to have affected millions of people, including those using the service at work.Complaints were posted online from Europe, Canada, the United States an

Jan. 25, 2014

Placebo sleep can help your brain work better: study

Just thinking you had a good night’s sleep can improve your cognitive abilities, a new study has suggested. The study, led by researchers at Colorado College, found that those who were told they’d had a good night’s sleep, even if they hadn’t, outperformed those who were informed they’d slept badly. The researchers told 164 participants that a new technique, which in fact does not exist, could measure their sleep quality from the night before. They were randomly assigned to two groups -- “above

Jan. 24, 2014

Placebo sleep can help your brain work better: study

Lenovo to buy IBM's low-end server business for $2.3bn

Chinese computer giant Lenovo will buy IBM's low-end server business for $2.3 billion, it Thursday, giving it a platform to compete in that sector with US giants Dell and Hewlett-Packard.IBM will receive $2.07 billion in cash and the rest in shares for the x86 business, Lenovo said, in a deal seen as helping the Chinese firm diversify away from the slumping PC-sales sector.IBM will still provide maintenance on behalf of Lenovo, while some 7,500 members of staff worldwide will be offered employme

Jan. 23, 2014

Activists protest LG’s New Jersey headquarters

The feud between LG Electronics and environmentalists over the firm’s construction plan for its U.S. headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, is far from over as more activists are joining the opposition side. According to The New York Times, environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Natural Resources Defense Council and a local conservation group said they would raise the ante in the ongoing legal battle against the Korean firm to halt the construction of its headquarters atop the

Jan. 23, 2014

SK Telecom to launch new user-friendly platform

South Korea’s No. 1 mobile carrier SK Telecom Co. said Thursday it plans to use a new platform for smartphones starting next month that aims to improve users’ convenience and block spam calls.The new system, named “T-phone,” will allow users to find numbers easily on its database of 1 million listings, making it faster than searching through the Internet, the company said.Based on SK’s positioning system, T-phone will provide the closest number depending on users’ location, along with related We

Jan. 23, 2014

Users to be allowed to delete default apps

South Korea’s smartphone users will be allowed to prune unwanted preinstalled mobile applications, a measure that will give them more data storage, the country’s communications ministry said Thursday.The Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning said it will apply new guidelines on preinstalled apps to local industry players starting in April.“The move aims to normalize an abnormal practice that causes inconvenience to smartphone users and causes unfair competition among industry players,” th

Jan. 23, 2014

Samsung SDI to build battery facility in China

South Korea’s Samsung SDI Co., a leading hybrid car battery maker, said Thursday it plans to tap into China’s battery market by establishing a production facility in cooperation with its counterparts there.Samsung SDI signed a memorandum of understanding with Anqing Ring New Group and Shanxi province in northern China to open a joint-venture by April. Their combined investments will total $600 million over the next five years.The firm, however, did not disclose details on stakes among the three

Jan. 23, 2014

Samsung SDI to build battery facility in China

[Newsmaker] Chinese display makers catching up fast

Dominance is shifting in the global display market as Chinese companies are fast emerging to challenge Korea’s giants in advanced technology.Korea’s liquid crystal display panels in terms of global output and shipment saw their market share slide from 48.9 percent in 2010 to 48.8 percent in 2013.The share taken up by the Chinese players, meanwhile, jumped from 4.7 percent to 12.5 percent during the same period, according to DisplaySearch, a global display market researcher.This impact from the C

Jan. 22, 2014

[Newsmaker] Chinese display makers catching up fast

LCDs to retain edge over OLEDs: expert

Conventional liquid crystal displays will dominate the display market for electronic appliances for the next 10 years as the next-generation organic light-emitting diode technology still needs to be developed, a leading Korean display researcher said.“LCDs will be the most widely used for the next 10 years, as key materials for organic lightemitting diodes have not yet been indigenously and fully developed,” Jang Jin, director of the Advanced Display Research Center at Kyung Hee University told

Jan. 22, 2014

LG Display losing Apple’s favor

LG Display has been losing its vigor since its key customer Apple began expanding and diversifying its supply chain of display panels in 2012.Besides the fact that Apple has been increasing its number of display suppliers in Japan and Taiwan for its smartphones and tablets, the globally sluggish market conditions for televisions and personal computers have weighed down the prospects for Korea’s second-largest display panel maker.LG Display reached its peak in the second quarter of 2012 when its

Jan. 22, 2014

Samsung TV retains top spot for eighth year

South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics Co. outperformed its rivals around the globe last year in television sales to retain its top place for the eighth consecutive year, data showed Wednesday.Samsung, also the world’s top maker of smartphones and memory chips, is estimated to have sold some 49 million units of flat-panel TVs in 2013, according to the data. The firm does not officially disclose annual sales figures.Market researcher DisplaySearch earlier estimated Samsung’s TV sales at arou

Jan. 22, 2014

Korea to invest W1.6tr in 5G network by 2020

South Korea will inject 1.6 trillion won ($1.49 billion) through 2020 with local firms to build the fifth-generation network in the country, the communications technology ministry said Wednesday.The 5G network is expected to be 1,000 times faster than the existing Long Term Evolution service, allowing users to download an 800-megabyte movie in one second, compared with 40 seconds on the LTE-Advanced network, currently billed as the world’s fastest.The Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning

Jan. 22, 2014

Google may face penalty over privacy

Google could face disciplinary action from the country’s communication regulator as the global search giant seems to have collected private personal data without individuals’ consent for its Street View services.The Korea Communications Commission said Tuesday that it would decide whether or not to impose penalties against Google as soon as it completes its investigation.“We have almost completed our investigation into Google. Its alleged data gathering without (consumers’) consent is in breach

Jan. 21, 2014

[Photo News] Samsung and Illy partnership

Jan. 21, 2014

LG G Flex to hit Europe next month

South Korea’s tech giant LG Electronics Inc. said Tuesday it plans to launch the G Flex, its first smartphone with a curved display, in the European market next month.The country’s No. 2 smartphone maker said it has decided to roll out the G Flex in 20 European countries, with the releases in Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Sweden and Austria scheduled for next month.The company had released it at home in November and followed up with launches in a handful of Asian countries, including Hong Kon

Jan. 21, 2014

Android dominates Korea in 2013: data

More than 9 out of 10 smartphones in South Korea ran on Google Inc.’s Android platform, data showed Tuesday. Around 93 percent of smartphones in the country were powered by the Android platform, far above the 5.1 percent for Apple Inc.’s iOS, the data by market researcher Strategy Analytics showed.Market shares for the Blackberry OS and Microsoft Corp.’s Window Phone OS stood at 0.1 percent and 0.9 percent, respectively, in the country, with Nokia Corp.’s Symbian rarely used. Market watchers poi

Jan. 21, 2014

Samsung seeks upgraded mobile system chips

South Korea’s tech giant Samsung Electronics Co. is seeking to turn around the lag in its mobile system chip market with a new version that supports the latest smartphone network, industry watchers said Tuesday.Samsung’s market share in application processors, which function as the “brains” of smartphones, was almost halved to 6.3 percent last year from 11 percent in 2012, data by market researcher Strategy Analytics showed.U.S. Qualcomm Inc. took the highest share at 34.8 percent last year, tra

Jan. 21, 2014

Comet-chasing probe wakes up, signals Earth

BERLIN (AP) ― Waking up after almost three years of hibernation, a comet-chasing spacecraft sent its first signal back to Earth on Monday, prompting cheers from scientists who hope to use it to land the first space lander onto a comet.The European Space Agency received the all-clear message from its Rosetta spacecraft at 1:18 p.m. EST ― a message that had to travel some 800 million kilometers.In keeping with the agency’s effort to turn the tense wait for a signal into a social media event, the p

Jan. 21, 2014

Comet-chasing probe wakes up, signals Earth

Hookworm genome reveals potential treatment targets

PARIS (AFP) ― Scientists said they had unraveled the genome of the hookworm, paving the way for better remedies against the disease-causing parasite that infects about 700 million people.An international team of researchers identified genes that help the hookworm invade its host, evade the body’s immune defences, and feed undisturbed on human blood for up to a decade.“Our findings provide information on molecules that are essential for the worm’s survival, therefore making them potential candida

Jan. 21, 2014

Astronomers ‘see’ gas strands of cosmic web

PARIS (AFP) ― Astronomers said they had for the first time seen the gas strands theorized to hold the universe together in a “cosmic web.”They had used the intense radiation generated by a quasar ― a byproduct of a supermassive black hole ― acting as a type of cosmic flashlight to illuminate part of the vast filament network.Cosmologists believe that matter between galaxies is distributed in a network of strands known as the cosmic web. The vast majority of atoms in the universe are thought to r

Jan. 21, 2014