Junior Reporter
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The site includes: Membership- the site provides Korean e-mail addresses free. A Q&A bulletin board- user can discuss problems and suggest solution.
A free bulletin board- there will be non-commercial ad, special messages. An on-line community- users can exchange experiences and information with on-line friends.
There are a visitors’ list and a section for information.
We are living in the information overflowing age. People tend to communicate via e-mail.
It is not convenient for people in many countries to use English e-mail address if their mother language is not English. Korea is not an exception. English e-mail addresses are often too long, meaningless and difficult to remember.
I often wish I could type my e-mail address in Korean. Fortunately, the service, the computer program that I wanted, has been invented recently by professor Kim at the UOS and is getting popular. Http://www.niceq.com began the service that supports multinational languages’ program including Korea for e-mail address. The service was invented by Kim Jin-soek.
He is a Dept. of Computer and Statistics professor at the UOS. As previous e-mail servers only supported ASCII code, servers could express only English e-mail IDs. They could not express special 2Byte characters.
As a result, many nations could not use their own language for e-mail addresses. Niceq.com solves this problem. For example, 홍길동@rose.com, ªÊª«ª¿@tulip.com and 金東喜@lily.com are possible now. Now, a user can be a member of niceq.com and use both 홍길동@niceq.com, and kdhong@aaa.com, as niceq.com allows to input both IDs (홍길동 and kdhong) at the same time.
When people send e-mail to 홍길동@niceq.com, the user of this e-mail address can receive the same mail from kdhong@aaa.com, as characters are automatically conversed into each other. Visiting this site not only allows you to change your e-mail address, but also allows you to meet other on-line friends.
Niceq.com service’s president said he plans ‘making Korean ID’ in the future and personally promotes beautiful Korean IDs. Niceq.com is going to have an event providing various gifts for selected beautiful ID users.
The following is an Interview with professor Kim Jin-seok:
What made you develope the Korean e-mail address system?
Most English e-mails that people use are not natural. I wanted people to use their real name for e-mail ID.
How long did you prepare this?
About 3 years, however most work was done in two years.
What will be the effect of Korean e-mail address?
I think it will affect the world, as not only Korea but also the other countries would want e-mail IDs in their own languages.
What was the biggest difficulty?
It was the English base of the e-mail system.
What do you think the benefit of this invention is?
It is convenient compared to English e-mail address.
How often do you use Korean e-mail address?
About 90% of e-mails and still in English, only 10% is Korean e-mails. I usually send Korean e-mail only to close friends.
What do you want to say to the UOS students?
The character of this invention is that no one can teach. I want our students to imagine all the time while studying here at the UOS as the invention comes from imagination and ideas picked up .
The UOS Times
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