I'm done with "The Cloud", and as of today, I am deprecating twitter

It started with the drop.io fiasco, which led me to create my own URL shortener that I control.

As a developer on the iOS and Android platforms, I can only imagine the heartbreak developers are suffering from the recent change in Twitter's change in their Terms of Service (TOS) that is essentially telling the very developers that helped the company build it's critical mass to go pound sand.

The writing is on the wall, corporate interests must prevail. This will undoubtedly result in censoring of tweets, deletion of accounts, lawsuits over who has the right to "own" a twitter name. Really? Been there, done that, got the T-Shirt and the DVD.

Twitter is news. That's how I view it and have used it, but as of today, it will only be one of my news sources. Just another way to contact me, and it will be on equal footing with Google Alerts, and any other news source I choose to follow through an RSS feed.

Am I leaving twitter? Not entirely, I simply won't play in their sandbox.

I've set up a personal River of News that I use to follow feeds from people and sources I care about. Turns out it isn't that many, and I have an excellent system to manage that. Following and unFollowing is as simple as pasting or deleting a single line.

Here's how twitter fits into my river;

I follow an rss feed of a search query for anything that shows up on twitter with the term @adamcurry.

There are a couple people I follow directly. For them I use a handy bookmarklet that surfaces the rss feed of that person.

To send messages into the twitter silo, I publish an rss feed that is picked up by twitterfeed.com, whi in turn publish it to twitter under my account. I also have an archive of my messages in html and a machine readable version

You can follow me on twitter, or just add the rss feed to any magnitude of rss follwing machines (formerly known as an aggregator or feedreader)

If you want a setup like this for yourself, you can get it for free (as in beer), but you have to do a bit little bit of work. The results will be worth it.

The development of radio2 and the river of news are very exciting to me, a reboot of a technology that is far more prevalent on the net than twitter, and open for anyone to use and play with. None of the aforementioned restrictions apply.

Oh, and all the cool kids are doing it.

 3/19/2011; 5:23:20 PM.   .

One of my (many) theories on the No Agenda podcast is about the intent to inject tracking devices into the population under the cover of vaccinations.

They don't call me the 'Crackpot' for nothing.

This morning I received an email from on of our show's producers, who put together such an astounding list of documentation that not only proves the theory is valid, but may even be being put in play with the recent changes in the 500Mhz radio spectrum.

With his permission, I am reposting his email verbatum here.

ITM John and Adam!

I've been a little behind with my listening recently and had to catch up to make sure you hadn't covered this since then, so apologies for taking a while to get this to you.

In episode 277 you talked about two stories: the BBC talking about RFID tag tests in Euros (coming soon to a dollar bill near you) and the roll out of the 500 mhz wireless network. I got the punchline, but when I waited for you guys to talk about it, it never happened. So here's the multi-layer payoff in case it's slipped by:

Firstly, the quote from the BBC article that said "We're even seeing if we can make tags thin enough to go into banknotes" is bullshit. Hitachi announced in Feb 2007 that they've developed an RFID chip just 5 microns thick that's small enough to be embedded in paper. RFID tags have apparently been in 20 Euro notes since Feb 2007Ê (the European Central Bank statement has since been removed from their site of course), and it was noted back in 2003 that it's Hitachi working with the ECB to put RFID into Euro notes.

Secondly, both the US and UK governments are looking to free up the 500mhz spectrum for use as a national wireless network. They're both angling to have this in place by 2020, but the question is: why the 500mhz range specifically? Well that would be because 500mhz is the minimum spectrum needed to read RFID tags with a wireless network! (badum-tish)

I work for the NHS, and this exact technology (albeit a more bulky version) was one we were asked to look into in 2007 for tracking patients and IT assets within our wireless network. We ultimately decided not to bring it in due to the cost, but the technology is mature and works.

Want to go one better?

Hitachi announced as far back as 2005 that they have developed an RFID chip that, unlike normal RFID chips, can: "operate in solution, it can be used to detect and transmit SNP data from within a sealed container holding a DNA sample solution, using passive RF communication, to an external reader/writer unit located outside the solution. Further, anticollision control was developed to enable data collection from multiple chips in the same solution at the same time.

This technology is expected to provide a simple and convenient SNP typing method for healthcare tailored to individual genetic predispositions (tailor-made medicine) in local clinics and hospitals. This work was performed as a part of a research and development project of the Industrial Science and Technology Program supported by New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization in Japan (NEDO)."

Still wondering why they're so eager for us to get our shots?

Welcome to mass-movement tracking in realtime of currency and people! Want to know who that is on the CCTV demonstrating in front of a government building? Just triangulate using the nearest three wireless access points (government provided for your pleasure) and read off the IPv6 addresses of the RFIDs in the vaccinated slaves - what could be easier!?

It's also worth noting that RFID isn't read only. The tags can be marked remotely, for instance to call authorities, or to refuse acceptance. Screw with the government and have all of your cash turned off and every wireless access point calling the cops as it scans you? Sounds fun!

Gotta love this free new world... now to go get my RFID shots and pick up my RFID money ;)

Paul the InfoSec guy.

 3/19/2011; 1:09:33 PM.   .