Flipboard is a compelling concept… it displays news from your Facebook account and any number of Twitter accounts in a magazine style format. That means large Helvetica headlines, easy to read Times content, and lot’s of photos.

But it doesn’t (yet) support RSS feeds as a source. Flipboard says they will at some point.

I wonder though if it is even necessary. I wanted to create sections for some of my favorite sources… Jay Rosen and Dave Winer for media commentary, Techmeme for tech stuff, and Against Dumb, for variety.

It turns out that they all have Twitter accounts. Those accounts typically link to all the same content that their RSS feeds do. Often more, because they will contain links to content that the authors find interesting, but that don’t appear in their RSS feeds.

And guess what. Twitter accounts are much easier to work with than RSS. Here’s why:

• Twitter accounts have names that are easy to find, remember and refer to. People can even talk about them.
• RSS feeds are links. They are technical. No one talks about them in normal discourse.
• Posting to Twitter is easier than adding to RSS. Even with Wordpress around.
• Twitter accounts are easy to aggregate into lists.

I understand that Twitter has a different intent than RSS, and that RSS provides much of the foundation of information flow on the internet.

But I just wonder if Twitter is ending up to be a much easier way to say “here’s what’s new… and interesting”. And if it’s easier, then why use RSS?

Just another example of how to use less energy withiout sacrificing quality of life.

Interestingly, the Model 271 is also:

• A baseball bat (glad it wasn’t one of these)
• A screening efficiency tester (what ever that is)
• RS-232 fiber optic driver (RS-232 over fiber? who knew!)
• A nuclear area monitor (I really don’t want to know why)
• A sewing machine (very cute one too)

How many Model 271’s do you know of?

“The new statistics also underscore the growing contribution to the world’s “carbon budget” from rapidly industrializing countries such as China, India and Brazil. Developing nations have roughly doubled their carbon output in less than two decades and now account for slightly more than half of total emissions, according to the new figures, up from about a third in 1990.”

Given that each dollar bill is 2.61″ wide by 6.14″ long, seven of them would be about 112 square inches. That’s about the area of the front of 9×12 song book.

$70 is about 7.8 square feet. A comfortable sofa for three.

$700 is about 78 square feet. I’d say that’s the size of the shadow your car makes, if you drive a subcompact.

$7,000 is about 779 square feet. Some one bedroom apartments in Lancaster are that big. Or small, depending on your tastes.

$70,000 is about 7790 square feet. A house that size might be considered decadent.

$700,000 is about 77,900 square feet. You would need to rent space at the Cancun Center to have enough floor space to lay down that many dollar bills.

$7,000,000 is just about 779,012 square feet. Now you are looking at the Charlotte Arena, and presumably you would need to enlist the help of a few friends to place that many bills.

$70,000,000 is 7,790,125 square feet, or around 180 acres. That’s a good size for a decent vineyard, but the vines probably wouldn’t appreciate being covered by money.

$700,000,000 is quite a bit of money, and would cover about 2.79 square miles. That’s the size of the 23508 Zip Code in Norfolk, VA.

$7,000,000,000 is usually shown as $7B. But it looks much more impressive with all those zeroes. That many dollar bills would cover 27.9 square miles, about the size of Centennial, Colorado. Centennial officially became a city in 2001.

$70,000,000,000 would cover 279 square miles, or the entire city of Memphis, Tennessee.

And finally we get to $700,000,000,000. That’s 2794 square miles. Or slightly less than Delaware and Rhode Island put together.

I get his point, but it seems to me that quiet is a strength that is easily underestimated.