March 2003 Archives

March 31, 2003

Comment from a friend who works at a major US TV Network on Kevin Sites Blog issue

17:57 UTC » Blogging about Blogging - Information and Media - Warblogging

I blogged earlier that I thought that CNN telling Kevin Sites to stop blogging sucked. I recently talked to a friend of mine who works at a major US TV Network and was presented a more balanced view on the issue. I have received permission to quote the following from an email exchange.

All U.S. TV networks have a script approval process and frankly I think overall it leads to better, more focused, and more accurate reporting, not the opposite. We have script approval for the same reasons newspapers and magazines have editors. If you're going to call script approval censorship then you'll have to call the whole editing process censorship.

Its also standard that a news organization has legal rights by contract to all "works" produced by its journalists. this is a basic market reality. Why should we expect a news company to pay us a decent amount of money and then not retain the rights to our news related "works"?  If we want total "freedom of speech" to write or say anything, anywhere at any time - especially on the same subjects that we cover as journalists - then we should expect to work for free.

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Chatting about Open Standards with President Ando of Sony

15:17 UTC » Blogging about Blogging - Consumer Electronics - Gadgets - Joi's Diary

Went to see President Ando of Sony. He is second in command under Chairman Idei and is more and more in charge of representing Sony in the US. He gave the speech at CES this year and said some some very interesting things. First he pushed open standards.

Ando said Sony will also work to use open standards in future products to make it easier for consumers to more widely access content on devices and urged other companies to help to establish these standards to help the industry progress.
Then he complained about the difficulty of the current record label business.
Steven Levy
After the keynote, Ando unwound at a dinner for a few journalists, where talk turned to the knotty problem of digital rights. He startled everyone by speculating that in the long term, given the nature of Internet copying, record labels may not have a future. "When you have a problem like this," he says, sighing, "I really wish we were a simple hardware company."
My kind of guy. We talked about blogs (of course), open standards and how cool it would be for Sony to really embrace open standards and let the blog tools and services talk to Sony products through open standards that we worked on together.

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Chandler Wiki

12:20 UTC » Software

Mitch Kapor blogs about documentation coming for the 0.1 release of Chandler by the Open Source Applications Foundation. They are using a Wiki for the collaborative development environment. Great example of how Wiki's are cool.

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SARS update

07:35 UTC » Health and Medicine

Is UN politics getting in the way of best practices?

AP
Taiwanese accuse U.N. health agency of ignoring them; say it could aggravate spread of mystery illness

By William Foreman, Associated Press, 3/30/2003 01:44

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) When a deadly flu-like virus began spreading through Asia earlier this month, a group of Taiwanese doctors sent an e-mail to the World Health Organization asking for help in investigating the mysterious bug.

No one responded. No investigators from the U.N. agency visited. And the requests for assistance continue to go unanswered a policy inspired by China's rivalry with Taiwan, and the island's struggle for recognition by the United Nations.

via Technorati Hot Links.

Also, Karuna Shinsho, former CNN and NHK anchorwoman now living in Hong Kong, has written a first hand report on Chanpon.org.

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March 30, 2003

The Buzz

13:15 UTC » Business and the Economy

Tim Oren also seems to think that the buzz is back and that we've hit a bottom.

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Blogshares - Buying and selling shares in blogs

13:01 UTC » Blogging about Blogging - Cool Web Sites

Listed on BlogSharesBlogshares just went beta. It is a site where you can trade shares of blogs using fake money. The price is based on trading and a valuation of sorts is derived from links weighted by how valuable the links are. (Kind of like google page rank.) This price/value spread is sort of a P/E. Obviously, this fuels the "popularity content" aspect of blogging. Having said that, it's fun. I wish I could short sell blogs. ;-) It will be interesting to see whether the blog prices predict new popular blogs accurately since people should buy blogs that are new and cool but people don't know about yet.

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The Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Politicians?

12:44 UTC » Humor

koizumi.jpg

The Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS) is a club for scientists who have, or believe they have, luxuriant flowing hair. The project was first announced in mini-AIR 2001-02.

I wonder if there is a Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Politicians? I would nominate Koizumi-san.

Via Xeni on Boing Boing

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I'm back...

12:34 UTC » Gadgets - Joi's Diary

I finally got my broken 15 inch PowerBook fixed and I've spent the last 2 days, messing with it to get everything installed. I started with a quick and dirty Carbon Copy Cloner copy from my 12 inch PowerBook and that didn't work. Then I did a fresh install and copied all of the libraries and frameworks over and that quickly got screwed up. I spent last night and today installing everything fresh from CD or downloads and moving just my email and key preferences over. Now it seems to be working. I sorted out a lot of stuff while I was at it and even organized my CD's. Phew. That was a lot of work, but I feel like I just moved into a new house with everything sorted out. But... I've let my blog go unattended for a few days and I feel REALLY guilty. BTW, the display on the 15 inch 1GHz is SOO much better than the 12 inch and the extra memory and speed of the CPU make this machine worth the extra weight and size. It feels much better now that I'm back on my 15 inch...

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Computer woes...

00:41 UTC » Joi's Diary

Sorry. Have spent the day trying to switch computers with disasterous results. I won't bore you with the details, but apologies for not writing anything today.

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March 28, 2003

SARS getting worse 1000 quarantined in Hong Kong

11:04 UTC » Health and Medicine - SARS

coronavirus.jpgI reported earlier that the situation with the killer pneumonia was getting better, but it looks like it's getting worse. AP reports that over 1000 people in Hong Kong have been quarantined and travel alerts are increasing. The WHO has called on countries to screen international air travelers for symptoms.

via Dan Gillmor

UPDATE: BBC reports that they've probably identifed the virus and it's called the Corona virus. via Marc's Voice

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Satire blogs

10:55 UTC » Cool Web Sites - Global Politics - Humor

bushblog.gif
A roundup of hilarious satire blogs. Blogs by GW Bush, Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il.

Kim Jong Il Live Journal link via woj@MetaFilter

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The elusive Mr. Fujimori

09:16 UTC » Japanese Politics

fujimori.jpg
Photo from CNN.com
So Interpol has issued a "Red Notice" asking countries to extradite former Peruvian President Mr. Fujimori. He is charged with a variety of crimes including running a paramilitary death squad. He is of Japanese origin and had hidden his Japanese citizenship until he fled to Japan. Japan accepted him and now is refusing to extradite him to Peru.

I heard that many politicians and business leaders in Japan are big supporters of Fujimori and they even threw a party for him when he arrived in Tokyo.

So, I don't personally know if the Peruvians are politically motivated and unfair as Fujimori claims, but ignoring Interpol and secretly admiring a criminal charged with running a death squad is very uncool in my book.

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March 27, 2003

Ben & Mena - a song by S. Frank

10:00 UTC » Blogging about Blogging - Humor

Steven Frank has composed a song about blogging called Ben and Mena. He blogs about it here, and the 3.8MB mp3 file is here. Probably interesting to hardcore bloggers only, but VERY funny. ;-)

Via Chris Pirillo

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March 26, 2003

You can watch Iraqi TV on the Net... Not

15:07 UTC » Warblogging

How to watch Iraqi Satellite TV on the web: The Saddam Show Paul Boutin has all the details in Slate, right here.
[...]
UPDATE: Oops. Too bad we just blew it up. AP reports one version of the story, and CBS reports another, as follows

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Blogger Code

14:49 UTC » Blogging about Blogging

Just like geeks have a geek code, bloggers now have a blogger code. Mine is: B9 d+ t+ k++ s u f++ i++ o+ x-- e+ l c--

Here is is a site to generate your code and here is a site to decode it.

The only question that was a bit difficult to answer was, "Does longevity equal respect in the blogging world? How long have you been regularly maintaining a personal web log or online journal?"

I have been posting journal-like entries on my web page since 1994, but I moved my site to joi.ito.com and started using Movable Type last June... I answered the question "Over 3 Years." but that might be wrong since I wouldn't tell people I've been blogging for more than three years. I guess this is the whole "what is a blog?" question. What do you think?

UPDATE: here's another decoder

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Two new Technorati services, Hot Links and Breaking News

13:05 UTC » Blogging about Blogging

Technorati, my favorite blog oriented engine just announced two new services. Breaking News and Hot Links. Breaking News shows articles from about 4000 "professional" news services that have been published in the last 12 hours that bloggers are talking about. (Take THAT Google News. ;-) ) Hot links shows links that bloggers are talking about in all categories in the past 12 hours in chronological order so you can see what is hot NOW. Very cool.

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March 25, 2003

My first segway ride

16:56 UTC » Gadgets

Taiichi Fox brought a Segway over to the office today and let us take it for a spin. It was great. It is one of the two Segways that I know about in Japan. He brought it from the US. I'm still trying to figure out whether to leave mine in the US or have it delivered to Japan. Japan is definitely more suited for Segways but we're not allowed to ride them yet. I'm applying for a regulatory waiver, but the first one was rejected. I'm applying for it again in June. I think I should probably leave mine in Silicon Valley to cruise around when I'm there and bring mine to Japan once we are allowed to cruise freely.

Anyway, it was lots of fun and perfect for people who have to walk 30 minutes to the train station every day.

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Salam, the blogger in Baghdad, mentioned on CNN

14:58 UTC » Blogging about Blogging - Warblogging

CNN MENTIONED SALAM PAX -- and gave his URL. This isn't cool.

More reason to hope the troops get to Baghdad soon, and keep Saddam's goons busy in the meantime.

IMHO, I think that Iraqi intelligence probably already reads Salam's blog so the CNN coverage MIGHT increase his risk, but at this point, I think the more people who read Salam's blog, the better.

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Japanese guy with long hair makes a chonmage

14:25 UTC » Cool Web Sites - Humor - Japanese Culture

A Japanese guy (site in Japanese but great pictures) with long hair cuts his hair to make a chonmage. Chonmage's are now only worn by sumo wrestlers and actors in samurai movies. This guy goes out to dinner and even gets his picture taken for his drivers license with his new 'doo. Chris, you should try this next.

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Frank Boosman agreeing Al Jazeera

11:48 UTC » Warblogging

Frank Boosman is pro-war and he and I have had several debates/discussions about this. On the issue of the treatment of POW's, he's on Al Jazeera's side and provides good reasons which I agree with and couldn't have said better.

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Salam is back online

00:29 UTC » Warblogging

Salam, our blogger in Baghdad was out of touch for a few days and I was getting worried. He's back online and says his Internet access was down, but it's back up.

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March 24, 2003

Christiaan on mutual respect and the Arab world

23:09 UTC » Global Politics - Warblogging

Christiaan van der Valk posted a thoughtful item about mutual respect and the Arab world on the GLT list.

Christiaan van der Valk
It goes without saying that Iraq and its people need all the help they can get short term.

Seeing US soldiers paint a message for Saddam on a missile saying "9/11" was a sad confirmation of US public opinion of the reason for this war. While of course inspired by a fear only those in combat have a right to judge, seeing troops cheer as missiles are fired off (a commander explains: "they know the devastation these things bring") was as revolting as seeing people in the Muslim world celebrate after 9/11. I am sure the US and UK are serious about bringing peace and stability to the region (albeit certainly without a sufficient understanding of what the region really wants) but a little PR briefing of the troops would have helped. I did some introspection this weekend and concluded that I, too, as probably most Westerners, have a level of sub-conscious fear and resentment against the Arab world -- as much as rationally I would like things to be different, I could not conclude otherwise. Why? Because apparently some primitive part of my brain says "they hate us" and "they threaten our way of life". Even if one has been educated (as I think I have) to always question such feelings and try to understand them and counter them through rationalization, it does not take a lot for these these feelings to take the upper hand. I am pretty sure most people in the Arab world have not been sensitized to signal and deal with such dangerous emotions -- in many cases rather the opposite. Try to imagine against that background how this war and its preparation feel. There is no doubt that the overwhelming majority of people in the Arab and Muslim world are convinced the West hates them. And as much as Bush and all of us are sure we're doing all the right things to inspire confidence, we haven't began to do what is needed to get there. It is this mindset we're up against. You can pump a hundred billion into post-war Iraq, if you do not address this basic issue it will not be interpreted as positive. We have to learn mutual respect and we have to accept compromise. Showing decency in every aspect of this war, which is now a fact of life, must be a first step.
quoted with permission

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My faceroll

21:32 UTC » Blogging about Blogging

How do you like my new faceroll? It's on in my left sidebar. Jason explains how to do it here. You have to be a paying member of Blogrolling.com to use it. I have mine set up to pick 5 people randomly. If you see your picture and you don't want to be in the faceroll or have another picture you'd rather I used, let me know.

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Lunch with Adriaan, developer of Kung-Log

13:24 UTC » Blogging about Blogging - Joi's Diary

Just had lunch with Adriaan, the developer of Kung-Log, my favorite OS X client for Movable Type. It uses the MetaWeblog API to talk to MT. I am proud to say that it was on this blog that Dave Winer and Ben Trott discussed and enabled metaWeblog.newMediaObject which allows me to upload photos, which was my big gripe with the MetaWeblog API. Now MT and Kung-Log support the new API. This photo of Adriaan is brought to you by Kung-Log. With this, I will probably switch to Kung-Log as my primary method of writing to MT.

Adriaan is Dutch and he is a researcher at Tsukuba. He is one of the many people writing great tools "on the side." I wonder if it is the open standards, the excitement of blogging, the ability to discuss standards more easily and better development environments that are causing this increase of useful tools. Or maybe it just looks that way to me since I'm so into blogging right now.

One request. Adriaan, can you do thumbnailing, upload the two images and create the html like MT does? I think you need to do it in the client since it isn't in the API...

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Tony Laszlo article in ACCJ - "Blogging, klogging and syndication"

10:47 UTC » Blogging about Blogging

Good entry level article (not just because he quotes me ;-) ). Talks about blogging, klogging, RSS, moblogging as well as blogging in Japan. It's available in pdf in the American Chamber of Commerce Japan Journal on Issho.org

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March 23, 2003

Fat club weigh-in

20:36 UTC » Health and Medicine - Introspective

So I went on a walk as Dave Winer suggested. Then, I called Yuichi, my fat club partner and we decided to play squash and have a weigh-in. We played squash for an hour. I hadn't exercised for a month when I went to the gym yesterday and I was pretty much a mess today. I totally suck at squash anyway, but I was obliterated today. The only thing I have ever been good at is wrestling. I was wearing my Polar heart monitor and noticed that my heart rate went up to 194bpm at one point. Probably a bit too high...

Anyway, I was confident that I had lost some weight since the last weigh-in so I drank a lot of water. Yuichi on the other hand didn't drink any. I wanted to trick him into thinking I was still way out of range so he would slack off. Then, with my new no-alcohol, walking-every-day regime, I could increase my rate of weight loss and beat him easily. ;-)

The weigh-in reminded me of wrestling where we had to weigh in before each match. The biggest difference is that I weigh 17kg more than I did when I was at my peak in wrestling... Anyway, he was still 4kg away from his target and I was 3kg away. We may be at this for awhile...

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Talk about Weblogs, Democracy, Risk and Japan at MIT Enterprise Forum

12:49 UTC » Blogging about Blogging - Business and the Economy - Emergent Democracy - Leadership and Entrepreneurship

Gave a talk on March 19 at the MIT Enterprise Forum in Tokyo hosted at the Nikkei BP office. I tried to tie a bunch of things together. I started out by saying that at a macro level, I was very depressed, but that at a micro level, I was extremely excited. I talked first about the lack of entrepreneurs in Japan, the problem with the economy and democracy in Japan. Then I talked about the nature of risk and why risk/return is broken in Japan. Then I talked about weblogs and about how excited I was about the political, media, social, communications and tool building aspects of weblogs. I closed by talking about open standards and the impact that open standards could have on consumer electronics. I promised to upload the slides so here they are in a 16.2mb pdf file and a1.2mb QT file. I don't have any notes on the slides, so by themselves, they're pretty useless, but...I promised. I used keynote, which was a true pleasure. I also fixed up some of the slides so the images are newer than the presentation date.

Generally good response. Blogging seemed to be new to people so the blow-by-blow of how a blog works seemed to be useful. The democracy issue was very interesting to some, irrelevant to others. ;-)

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March 22, 2003

TouchGraph GoogleBrowser V1.01

22:38 UTC » Cool Web Sites - Search

TouchGraph GoogleBrowser V1.01 is a cool Java tool to let you see your Google neighbors. Uses Google API. Reminds me a bit of the Blogstreet visual neighborhood.

Via Werblog

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Video of Bush getting hair coiffed online

20:12 UTC » Humor - Warblogging

Washington Post
We Begin Combing in Five Minutes
By Lloyd Grove
Friday, March 21, 2003; Page C03

The White House is vowing a strong retaliatory response after the BBC aired live video of President Bush getting his hair coiffed in the Oval Office as he squirmed in his chair and practiced on the teleprompter minutes before Wednesday night's speech announcing the launch of military operations against Saddam Hussein.

The footage available on The Smoking Gun.

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Switching to bloglet

18:18 UTC » Blogging about Blogging

My email notifications list is a combination of people who had subscribed to my blog, my old mailing list and random friends. I stopped sending blog entries via email when I started increasing my output. Some people have told me that they would rather receive email notifications. I just set up a Bloglet account and now you can get this blog via email. If you are receiving this via email, this will be the last time you get email from me. If you would like to subscribe by email, please go to my site and subscribe. The box to enter your email is towards the bottom of the bar on the left side of the page.

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Bush and Blair lipsynching video

17:48 UTC » Humor

Very funny video of lipsynching Bush and Blair. 3.8mb .mpg file.

Via WombatNation

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No more alcohol until I lose more weight...

15:37 UTC » Health and Medicine - Introspective

I've been trying to lose weight and set a target weight. I made a bet with Yuichi. Whoever hits their target first wins. The loser has to be a chauffer for the other one for a day. Well, that doesn't seem to be enough incentive. My weight's been hovering for the last week. So new rule. No more alcohol until I hit my target. I'll think about drinking again at that point. This should help in a variety of ways. I have stopped blogging when drunk. If I stop drinking, I will be able to blog at night and catch Dave Winer when he starts blogging in the morning on the East Coast. With the increase in email since I started blogging and all of the great new deals to look at in Silicon Valley, I am definitely reaching my limit on available time and not drinking should significantly increase my "uptime."

So, this is an official announcement. If anyone catches me drinking, you can smack me and blog that I'm a liar and a cheat. Come to think of it, I quit smoking since I started blogging. After my weight is under control and I stop drinking, maybe I'll take a crack quitting caffeine. Then I can announce that blogging is good for your health and that it saves lives. ;-)

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Technorati Current Events

10:52 UTC » Blogging about Blogging

Technorati's current events, a new feature on Technorati is a great source for news. Very up-to-date and interesting.

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Lisa Rein has footage on her blog of police hitting protestors in SF

10:13 UTC » Warblogging

If you haven't seen it already, Lisa has video footage of police hitting protestors in San Francisco.

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CNN stops warblogger

09:49 UTC » Warblogging

Kevin Sites
Pausing the warblog, for now. Dear readers: I've been asked to suspend my war blogging for awhile.
That sucks. I wonder if CNN thought he was getting too much attention. He was the only professional journalist on the inside blogging that I know of. Now we have to hope that Christopher of Back to Iraq 2.0 gets his stuff in order and actually makes it into Iraq and hope that Salam stays alive and keeps on blogging.

Via Instapundit

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Is Tony Perkins and AlwaysOn taking blogging to the "next level"?

09:20 UTC » Blogging about Blogging

"Just like the Internet was 10 years ago, blogging is popular with an underground culture that is doing it for the love and passion," said Tony Perkins, who edited the recently folded Red Herring technology magazine and last month launched a business blog called Always On Network.

"Now there are people like me coming along and trying to figure out how to package it," Perkins said. "It's time to take it to the next level."

Interesting thought. What level are we on? I guess it might look "underground" when you first join, but blogging has already past the "underground culture" phase, I think. Having said that, I'd like to continue doing it for love and passion.

Nick Denton says this about the article.

One of the most clueless articles in a while, on the weblog phenomenon. Stars Tony Perkins, editor-in-chief of the defunct Red Herring, and his new venture, a super-blog about technology that I can't even find through Google.
Henry Copeland blogs some thoughts and an exchange with Tony Perkins where Tony gets a bit defensive. Elizabeth Spiers blogs:
The funniest thing is Tony's attitude toward Henry—the who-do-you-think-you-are indignation. This is how blogs work, Tony. You generate content. Other people comment on it. And you're not always going to like what they say.
Tony comments on Elizabeth's blog in humble lowercase:
Tony Perkins
to the lovely elizabeth spiers who runs this site, i promise to work harder. i must say that the fact that a person as obviously as smart and qualified as you are can't find a single thing of value on AO is certainly dissapointing to me. if you don't mind, i will let you know when i finally post something that you might find useful. btw, i appreciate the feedback so far.
So... Where am I on this? I've signed up for and played around with AlwaysOn. It looks sort of like a blog, but doesn't feel like a blog for a variety of reasons other people have blogged already, but the articles feel like magazine columns and it doesn't have the linked-in/real-time/community-participation element that real blogs have. For instance, I think Dan Gillmor does a great job of blogging and having a weekly column separating his interaction with the blogging "underground" and the readers of his column. Two different groups of people.

On the other hand, I think Tony is turning on a lot of people in Silicon Valley and getting bigshots to blog is a good thing. I do think it would be better to try to learn how to blog before evangelizing though. I am a venture capitalist trying to figure out how to make money. Blogging feels like 1992 to me. Lots of tool builders, lots of buzz, pre-Yahoo, pre-Amazon. I'm doing what I did in '92. I'm immersing myself in the technology and the community. I started my blog June last year and am finally figuring out the nuances, which makes blogging so cool. You really have to do it and immerse yourself in it before you really "get it." I think the risk that Tony faces is that "taking it to the next level" before you understand the current level is that you might not bring all of the good stuff with you to that level. I am also trying to "take it to the next level" but I'm part of a group effort.

Anyway, I thought the interview with Idei was great. I think Tony's helping everyone become more aware of blogging generally and I wish him the best. It reminds me a bit of how I alienated the Japanese diary community when I started ranting about blogs in Japan. They were upset because I had not given them credit for popularizing the form in Japan and acting like blogging was a new thing. Maybe a lot of the negative reaction to Tony is a similar feeling. I do think that there are a lot of smart people in the "blog underground" that Tony should probably interact with more and calling us an underground culture is not the best way to make friends.

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SARS virus identified - no easy cure, but not so infectious

07:51 UTC » Health and Medicine - SARS

You have probably seen this already, but just to close the loop on my March 16 post about this...

The good news is it looks like they figured out what it is. The bad news is that it will probably be years before they have a vaccine or a cure. The good news is it doesn't spread so easily.

I commend the WHO et al. Everyone did a great job coordinating by email, keeping everyone informed without causing a panic. Great execution. I felt more informed than any other such threat in the past. On the other hand, if the bug had gone into a full blown outbreak, there might have been a panic...

BBC
Scientists in Hong Kong have claimed a key breakthrough against a virulent form of pneumonia which is claiming more victims around the world.

The researchers have identified the mystery respiratory illness at the heart of a global health scare as a virus from the paramyxoviridae family, which are responsible for conditions such as mumps and measles.
[...]
"It is rather slow-moving, rather restricted to families and hospitals, not a rip-roaring affair, but still very nasty.

"There are no anti-viral drugs against this family of viruses, and there are no vaccines available. It will be a question of several years work.

"But it is not fantastically infectious, so I wouldn't expect there to be a massive outbreak in other parts of the world."

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March 21, 2003

A Minimal Compact Public Beta

09:38 UTC » Emergent Democracy

I'm a bit late in commenting on this, but Adam released it in the middle of my Silicon Valley immersive experience and had a hard time concentrating. His paper which is available as a pdf file or on his web page is an interesting idea. The basic idea is to create a constitution and manage it like we manage open source software projects. It's a short paper and he doesn't elaborate on some of the details of how it would be done, but I think it is an interesting notion.

I've worked with some UN model law around electronic commerce and cyber arbitration, and some of the ideas are similar. Create a core code base that people can adapt and use locally. Helps harmonize. The main difference between what the UN does and what Adam is suggesting is the use of an open structure like open source.

I think the paper is a bit too geeky for lawyers and a bit to constitutional law oriented for geeks. I have the same problem with my emergent democracy paper.

Adam is releasing 1.0 this summer, I think. Look forward to reading it.

Continue reading "A Minimal Compact Public Beta"

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The First International Moblogging Conference

09:15 UTC » Moblogging

Adam Greefield is proposing to hold a conference about moblogging in Tokyo this summer. Sounds like a good idea. Especially the fact that it's in Tokyo. ;-)

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