[404th] Looming blackout threat / 'Gangnam Style' Riches Grow by Clicks and Bounds, but Mostly Overseas / Software That Shows What Your Shiny New iPad

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TN_Topic_2012-12-08.docx

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Looming blackout threat

As a cold snap grips the nation, power consumption is increasing rapidly, fueling worries about possible power shortages. 

On Wednesday, power demand reached 73.02 million kilowatts, leaving only 4.45 million kW in reserve. The previous day, reserve electricity dropped to 4.11 million kW, barely staying above the 4 million kW mark that triggers emergency measures. 

The government’s emergency response manual identifies four stages in emergency management. It enters emergency mode when backup power falls below 4 million kW. 

The last stage is when power reserves fall below 1 million kW. It requires the government to implement rolling blackouts ― intentional rotational electricity shutdowns for certain areas to avert a total blackout.

This winter, the threat of power outages looms larger than ever for two reasons. First, the meteorological agency has forecast that this winter would be much colder than usual. In November, the average temperature was roughly 4 degrees Celsius lower than a year ago. According to the Korea Energy Management Corp., power demand rises by 1 million kW when the mercury drops one degree from minus 10 degrees Celsius.

Second, three 1-million-kW reactors at Yeonggwang Nuclear Power Plant are not in operation. Unit 3 was shut down in October after cracks were found in control rod tunnels, while Units 5 and 6 were suspended in November to replace more than 7,000 substandard parts used in them.

According to the Ministry of Knowledge Economy, it would take at least two months to replace the parts. 

To make matters worse, the Board of Audit and Inspection announced Wednesday that it has also found that 1,550 substandard parts were used in two reactors at Kori Nuclear Power Plant. 

Yet the government said it would not halt the two reactors because the identified parts did not pose a threat to safety. If the two reactors also had to be stopped for parts replacement, the nation would face disaster.

As the mercury is expected to stay below normal for most of the winter, the government estimates that power reserves could drop to 1.27 million kW in January unless intensive power-saving measures are taken. 

So it launched an energy conservation campaign on Dec. 3, which would last until the end of February. To avoid another power crisis, citizens and businesses need to actively participate in the campaign. 

Citizens are encouraged to save electricity by keeping the temperature in their residences between 18 and 20 degrees Celsius. They also need to refrain from using electricity during the peak hours of between 10 a.m. and noon and between 5-7 p.m. 

Companies are required to cut back on energy consumption by 3 to 10 percent, while commercial buildings should ensure that their indoor temperatures do not rise above 20 degrees Celsius.

Questions

1.       What is the fundamental problem of this situation? Do we need more power plants? How can we deal with this problem?

2.       Even though the electric energy consumption of industry is much bigger(4 times) than the others, the price of the electric energy is cheaper. Is it fair?

'Gangnam Style' Riches Grow by Clicks and Bounds, but Mostly Overseas

By YOUKYUNG LEE and RYAN NAKASHIMA

SEOUL — As “Gangnam Style” gallops toward one billion views on YouTube, the first Asian pop artist to capture a huge global audience has gotten richer click by click. So too have his agent and his grandmother. But the money from music sales is not flowing in from the rapper’s homeland, South Korea, or elsewhere in Asia.

With one song, 34-year-old Park Jae-sang — better known as Psy — is set to become a millionaire from YouTube ads and iTunes downloads, underlining a shift in the way money is being made in the music business. An even bigger dollop of cash will come from TV commercials.

From just those sources, Psy and his camp will rake in at least $8.1 million this year, according to an analysis by The Associated Press of publicly available information and industry estimates. But for online music sales in South Korea, he will earn less than $60,000.

Here is how it works.

“Gangnam Style” with its catchy tune and much imitated horse-riding dance is the most-watched video on YouTube ever.

The viral video has clocked more than 889 million YouTube views since its July release, beating Justin Bieber’s “Baby,” which has racked up more than 808 million views since February 2010. Psy’s official channel on YouTube, which curates his songs and videos of his concerts, has nearly 1.3 billion views.

TubeMogul, a video ad buying platform, estimates that Psy and his agent, YG Entertainment, have raked in about $870,000 as their share of the revenue from ads that appear with YouTube videos. The Google-owned video service keeps approximately half.

Psy and YG Entertainment also earn money from views of videos that parody his songs.

 “Gangnam Style” has been downloaded 2.9 million times in the United States and has been the No. 1 or No. 2 seller for most weeks since its debut, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

The song sells for $1.29 on the Apple iTunes Store, the market leader in song downloads. Apple generally keeps about 30 percent of all sales, so the Psy camp could be due more than $2.6 million.

But earnings from downloads in Psy’s homeland are far from an embarrassment of riches.

South Koreans pay less than $10 a month for a subscription to a music service that allows them to download hundreds of songs or to have unlimited access to a music streaming service. That makes the cost of a downloaded song about 10 cents on average. The average price for streaming a song is 0.2 cent.

Psy’s cut for downloads is 14 percent. That falls to 7.5 percent for streamed songs. Yes, 7.5 percent of 0.2 cent. And that is before Psy’s “Gangnam Style” co-composer takes his share. The biggest cut goes to his agent and online retailers.

According to the Gaon Chart of top music in South Korea, “Gangnam Style” had been downloaded more than 3.6 million times and streamed about 40 million times as of November. That adds up to a little more than $61,000.

As for many other parts of Asia, illegal downloads and pirated CDs are so pervasive that only a small minority are willing to pay up for the legal versions.

It is television commercials that are the big money spinners for the most successful of South Korea’s so-called K-pop stars. Psy has been popping up in TV commercials in South Korea for top brands like Samsung Electronics and the mobile carrier LG Uplus.

Chung Yu-seok, an analyst at Kyobo Securities, estimates Psy’s commercial deals will amount to 5 billion won, or $4.6 million, this year.

The money is cool. The products not so much. Psy is now the face of a new Samsung refrigerator and a major noodle company.

A fact little known outside South Korea is that Psy’s father, uncle and grandmother own a combined 30 percent of DI Corp., a company that makes equipment that semiconductor companies use to make computer chips.

It is a stretch to explain how the success of “Gangnam Style” will bolster DI’s profits but that does not seem to matter to the South Korean stock market. Perhaps inspired by the pure power of pop, DI shares surged eightfold from July after Psy’s hit reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 1 on the U.K. singles chart.

It was time to cash in for Psy’s grandmother, who sold 5,378 shares for about $65,000.

The share price has fallen since then but is still about double what it was before the release of “Gangnam Style.”

Summary

Questions

1.       What is the reason that Psy can conquer the world?

2.       Even though the huge number of downloads in Korea, his income is much smaller than that of in foreign country. Instead, he made a lot of money from TV commercials. Is it fair?

3.       Do you think what the problem of this situation is?

Software That Shows What Your Shiny New iPad Can Do

By KIT EATON

I’ve been a gadget fanatic since before I could haltingly pronounce “gadget,” and technology is incorporated into every hour of my waking life in one way or another. But I remember that the first time I held a modern tablet PC was something extra-special. It was as if a bit of technology from 20 years in the future had fallen through a time warp and into my hands.

Apple’s iPad typifies this tech revolution, and the company has just released the iPad Mini and an upgraded full-size iPad. They’re powerful, sleekly futuristic devices, and if you’ve recently bought one, or you’ve put one on your wish list, then you’ll be needing some apps.

For Apple newcomers, there are some apps to try right away. GarageBand ($5 in iTunes) is a music-making app, and its playable instruments will amuse and amaze you, showing how powerful a touch screen can be. Amazon’s Kindle app (free) works beautifully for reading and syncs with e-books you may already have bought from the company. Apple’s free iBooks is also a good e-reader app, with a touch more panache in its graphics. Apple’s Pages ($10) is a touch-screen alternative to Microsoft Word. Finally, The Elements: A Visual Exploration ($14) is so rich in detail and graphics that it could make you rediscover the fun of chemistry.

Games are perhaps the best way to explore the power of a new tablet. New iPad Mini owners may enjoy an old classic: Mirror’s Edge ($10). This game is set in a dystopian future in which you play a free-runner who leaps and slides across a city’s rooftops. It made its debut as a beautiful console game years ago, and though the gameplay was simplified for the iPad, it’s still visually amazing. It’s fun to control too, requiring carefully timed swipes on the screen. You’ll also get a kick out of seeing this powerful game run on a tablet that’s so tiny. A newer app that Apple has been promoting recently is the $4 game LostWinds2: Winter of the Melodias. In some ways it’s similar to Mirror’s Edge, requiring deft taps and swipes to control your character as you explore a fantasy world. But this game is a lot more endearing, and has moments of gameplay that’ll make you grin with satisfaction at your achievements and at the story line.

IPad 4 owners, with their Retina-display tablets, will get a kick out of the amazing Wild Blood ($7). It’s a role-playing game set in Arthurian times, and its 3-D graphics are extraordinary — right down to leaves tumbling from trees and the flapping wings of a dragon. With an app this complex you have to put up with occasional pauses as it loads content, and it eats up a lot of your iPad’s internal storage. But it’s worth it to be able to play a tablet game that looks like it belongs on something as powerful as a PlayStation or Xbox.

For a totally different type of game with simpler but equally beautiful graphics, try Contre Jour ($1). This app is all about using the touch screen to gently move your tiny, monocular character around an eerie world full of magical tentacles and airborne energy sparkles. There’s some physics-based play in there, and a soundtrack so calming it’s available as a separate album.

The experience of watching a video on a tablet is also something special — it’s like holding a movie in your hands. Google has not yet released an official iPad YouTube app, so Jasmine (free) is currently the best YouTube app you can use. It lets you log in to your YouTube profile to access playlists, and its many other useful features include the ability to keep playing a clip’s audio when you leave the app, making it great for casual music listening. The YouTube rival Vimeo’s official iPad app (also free) is a pleasure to use, and designed to be very clear and simple. This app even has a built-in video recorder and editor, so you can create and share clips easily.

Since we’re talking about video recording, consider that one great way to show off your new iPad is via its high-quality cameras. For fun, check out MiniatureCam ($1), an app that applies effects to videos or photos that make them look like recordings of tiny models instead of the real world. It has well-designed controls and is surprisingly powerful for its low cost.

Lastly, it’s always nice to talk about the weather. My new favorite weather app, which looks fabulous on the iPad’s screen thanks to its high level of detail, is WeatherMap+ ($3). This app is all about showing you map-based graphical weather predictions — and as such it requires a bit of thought to understand it. But it’ll definitely satisfy your inner geek more than the mere cloud symbols that other apps offer.

With either a big or small iPad — enjoy these apps, and your little slice of future tech.

Questions

1.       Do you use tablet or smartphone? Why do you use it? Could you share how to use your smart devices?

2.       Is it just an expensive game device or a ‘smart device’ which can help your life better?