So this post is sort of overdue. A while back I submitted a paper to the DEFCON 19 computer security conference in response to their annual call for papers. They were looking for papers on the subject of how to deal with situations like the Egyptian uprising that started in January 2011. Basically the Egyptian government did the unthinkable and basically turned off internet access for the entire country because citizens were using their cell phones to send messages to Twitter with accounts of the violence taking place.

At the time, I had been actively using APRS (a digital ham radio protocol) to send and receive messages with the International Space Station. After doing some research, I discovered that it is possible to send an email via APRS to any email address in the world. I realized that certainly if you could send an email via APRS, you should also be able to post to Twitter except that there were no working services to accomplish that.

Because of this I built HamRadioTweets.com including a piece of software to act as an APRS to Twitter gateway. Now you are able to send an APRS message to “TWITR” (without quotes) and your message should be posted to @hamradiotweets on Twitter.com almost immediately.

In December 2006 I attended the first ever Elite Retreat Conference in San Antonio, TX. In my opinion, this was the best conference of this type I have ever attended. The attendees numbered about 20 and there were abundant opportunities to talk one-on-one with the presenters. Coupled with the fact that it was a “no sales pitch” event, this made the conference all the more interesting.

The upcoming Elite Retreat conference in March 2007, being held in San Francisco will prove to be no less informative. With the addition of Darren Rowse, Kris Jones and Neil Patel the organizers have expanded the amount of information that will be presented.

Darren Rowse of Problogger.net is a full time blogger and internet personality. Darren presumably replaces Dave Taylor who was a presenter at the last event.

Kris Jones of Pepperjam Search, a new addition to the presenter list, will prove to be an invaluable resource for internet marketing and internet business in general.

Neil Patel, an internet marketing consultant and creator of CrazyEgg.com, will prove to be a very interesting addition. Neil is a very smart guy and his abilities cover a broad spectrum of internet related businesses.

Rounding out this list and present at the San Antonio conference will be Jeremy Schoemaker, better known as Shoemoney, SEO, affiliate marketer, PPC arbitrage expert, SEM & branding extraordinaire and an all-round fun guy to hang-out with.

Aaron Wall, an extremely smart guy and well known for his work on Search Engine Optimization (seobook.com) will have a wide variety of SEO techniques to impart. Aaron is a highly paid SEO consultant who large companies consult with in order to improve their search engine rankings.

Last but not least, Lee Dodd, the organizer of the Elite Retreat Conferences. Lee is a forum and online community expert. Lee’s knowledge in this and other areas proved to be very informative and interesting at the conference in San Antonio.

In my opinion, despite the pricey admission fee, Elite Retreat San Francisco is an event not to be missed.