Nikolai Filatov, head of Moscow's epidemiological services, told reporters he thought SARS was man-made because "there is no vaccine for the virus, its makeup is unclear, it has not been very widespread, and the population is not immune to it." – SFGate.com

Either Russian interpreters need better training or this is the dummest exhibition of logic I have encountered.

Marc Canter is probably like the guy who saw the Bering land bridge form and yelled "Hey, guys!  Lets go across!"  He joined LinkedIn and invited 50 people.  I am too lazy to do that.  Its too much work to think about who I know, whether I should invite them, and to find and type in information.  LinkedIn should make it easier to invite.

One way to make it really easy to invite people is to leverage the informal network already formed in Blogland: blogrolls, links, trackbacks, and comments.  Given my blog's URL, a list of candidates for invitation should come up.  Even if some of them already joined, I want to know about it.  Best way to form new network is to add them in natural groups so they can support each other.  Come on Reid, this is no brainer.  Just swallow the whole Blogland a juicy cluster at a time!

A tip on subscription-based revenue model: make it free for and offer extra goodies to Connectors (as in Tipping Point).  This is how hunters catch whole herds.

I just joined LinkedIn, a Ryze-like serviced founded by Reid Hoffman, former COO of Paypal.  What I can't figure out is the revenue model for companies like Ryze and LinkedIn.  I had a similar social network-based business idea for a while, but it was limited to specific industries and groups of people and had a per-project profit sharing.  LinkedIn and Ryze are more general so I don't know how peer-pressure for profit sharing can be applied here.

UPDATE: According to Joi Ito, Reid was not the COO of Paypal, but an EVP which I assume stands for Executive VP of something.  *shrug*  I still don't think there is any money to be made there.  In fact, I don't think there is anything of substance in so called social software.  Hype and rush will leave the market severely fragmented and no critical mass for anyone.  I maybe proven otherwise, but that is my view at this time.

Based on Washington Post articles (1, 2, 3, 4), The Nature Conservancy (TNC) smells like something that started with good intentions and then got swamped by carpet baggers.  Apparently, they interpreted the word "conserve" literally: to keep up and reserve for personal or special use.  Buying land using people's donation and then drilling for oil is ridiculous.  I'll bet Bush would be their dream CEO.

Their network of websites gives an entirely different picture, although I can't help notice that they look very well and expensively done.  I hope every one who took part in those "not illegal" deals get nailed to the wall.  I am going to tell everyone I know to avoid TNC like the plague.

People are looking at Wiki again, probably due to popularity of blogging.  My take on Wiki is that there are some good ideas in Wiki, but there are severe inherent weaknesses that usually leads to an ever growing pile of mess.

Peter Morville wrote about Trust by Design, a key component of Wiki, but fails to mention the downsides:

• Difficulty of evolving Wiki content due to social and structural constraints
• Inconsistent quality, style, and direction

If Blog is an one-mensional animal with a single continuous stream of consciousness, Wiki is a N-dimensional animals with many segmented strands of consciousness.  While the two are related on the surface, they are two very different beasts.

UI-wise, Wiki is like a fun house for cheery gully dwarves, endless interconnected rooms with five-feet high ceiling and no housemaids.  Think neck pains and perma-mess.

I use Radio and like it for the most part.  What I don't like is its tendency to depend too much on UserLand servers.  I don't mind generated pages with static resources from busy servers (i.e. W3C, UserLand), because I can replace them with my own copies.  What I am concerned about are dynamic contents pulled from UserLand servers, particularly the comments.

UserLand servers are usually dependable and speedy, but occasionally they are not available (like now).  When Radio comment service is down readers can't access the comments.  Once posted, comments are static content which can be stored locally as XML and HTML files as well as being embedded in RSS files.  Only the comment posting service need to be handled by UserLand servers since many Radio sites don't have CGI capabilities.

All too often, experts from all areas under-estimate the power of myths, thinking myths can be dispelled with information and education.  Myths are not mists, but memes more powerful than facts.  Even when people are informed or educated, myths persists still by interfering with memory and communication.  In my opinion, counter-myths are often more effective than truth.

I have no idea where this bit of thought came from.  Maybe this is just part of being an eccentric.

I think people are overlooking a very important medium for communication: slideshows.  During the [second] Iraq war, I got used to looking at slideshows of the pictures from the war — I forget which online paper it was (either NY Times or Washington Post), but they don't have slideshows on the frontpage anymore, so I can't tell now.  Looking at those slideshows, reminded me of the feelings I had while flipping through LIFE magazine long time ago.  While words inform me, those pictures moved me.

Like Tim Bray's recent comparison between XML and sex, even a bad picture is still pretty good.  Piecing them together in sequence creates a magical moment, a cusp of me out of time and place.  An important factor is the size of the pictures.  they should be big.  How big, I am not too sure, but there seems to be a point where the edge of the picture becomes insignificant, a point of immersion.

In some way, I feel as though I am imagining things, but I really feel that there is magic here that will hit people harder than words can ever do.  It is something that moving pictures often fails to capture, because there is no space for me between the frames.  With slideshows, there is.