April 24, 2013

A false tweet from the Associated Press (AP),  one of the largest and most trusted news-gathering services in the world, created panic on Wall Street for a brief time yesterday. Computer hackers entered AP’s Twitter account and sent a false message stating that the White House had been bombed and that President Obama was injured. It took AP’s staff almost no time to spot and correct the tweet, but the damage was done. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, an index that tracks prices on the stock exchange for  30 major firms, fell 143 points in a matter of minutes. Such a quick and steep drop in stock prices is sometimes known as a flash crash. The market soon recovered once the truth was known, but the panic pointed to recent problems with the use of social media as a news source.

Twitter users post short messages, called tweets, that must be less than 140 characters long. This image shows a section of World Book's Twitter profile page. A profile page collects and displays a user's recent tweets. (© Twitter)

Twitter accounts have been hacked with greater frequency in 2013, especially accounts belonging to news organizations. In March, a group claiming to be supporters of Syria’s beleaguered President Bashar Assad gained control of Twitter accounts belonging to the United Kingdom news organization, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). On April 15, National Public Radio (NPR) discovered that some of their Twitter accounts had been hacked by the same group, who also claimed responsibility for yesterday’s incident on AP’s Twitter account. Reuters (Thomson Reuters) and al-Jazeera had also been targeted.

Twitter has begun working on a new security system that will prevent hackers from being able to break into an account, even if they have the passwords for that account. That new system has yet to be released. Further, it does not address the issue of how quickly information can be disseminated on social media, whether false or true. The issue there concerns readers believing and reacting to reports so quickly.

 Additional World Book articles:

• Social networking website
• Stock exchange

April 1

April 1 is known as April Fools’ Day. In many countries, including the United States, it is the custom to play tricks on people on April 1. A favorite joke is to send someone on a fool’s errand, a search for something that does not exist. In the United States, the victim is called an April Fool.

Even major corporations are joining in on April 1 mischief. For example, Google, Inc., a company that provides online searching and other services for Internet users around the world, announced today that they were closing YouTube, the incredibly popular video-sharing website they had bought for $1.65 billion. On its April 1 release on its blog, Google claimed that YouTube had only been purchased as a way to find the best video in the world. Virgin Airlines announced today that it was introducing glass-botttomed planes on some of its routes. The social-networking website Twitter claimed it was going to begin charging customers more for vowels. Many newspapers print special stories on April 1.

No one knows for certain where the custom of pranks on April 1 began. Some historians believe the April Fools’ custom may have started in France. There, the old New Year’s festival was observed from March 25 to April 1 and ended with an exchange of gifts. In the mid-1560′s, King Charles IX changed the New Year to January 1. People who still celebrated the New Year in April were called April fish and sent mock presents. Others theorize that April Fools’ Day may be related to the ancient Greek and Roman spring festival Hilaria, which celebrates the resurrection of the god Attis.

Additional World Book article:

• Humor
• Laughter

February 27, 2013

The name “Vulcan” was a surprise co-winner in the “Pluto Rocks” online contest in which the public was asked to help choose names for two moons recently discovered orbiting Pluto. “Vulcan,” which was not on the original ballot, was a write-in candidate suggested by actor William Shatner, who starred in the “Star Trek” science-fiction television and film series. “Vulcan” collected 174,062 of the 450,324 votes cast. “Cerberus,” the name of the three-headed dog that guarded the entrance to the underworld in Greek and Roman mythology, came in second, with nearly 100,000 votes. The contest was organized by astronomers with the SETI Institute, who found the moons in 2011 and 2012 using the Hubble Space Telescope. SETI is a research organization that searches for life in the universe beyond Earth.

Canadian-born actor William Shatner gained fame as Captain James T. Kirk, commander of the starship U.S.S. Enterprise in the television science-fiction series "Star Trek" (1966-1969). (© Paramount/The Kobal Collection)

The ballot for the “Pluto Rocks” contest originally included 12 names from Greek and Roman mythology associated with the underworld, also known as Hades. Pluto was the god of the dead in Roman mythology. He was almost identical to Hades, the Greek god of the dead. The SETI scientists agreed to add “Vulcan” to the ballot after Shatner promoted the name on Twitter. In Roman mythology, Vulcan was the god of fire, metalworking, and skilled craftwork in general. Although he did not dwell in Hades, he was a nephew of Pluto and was believed to have his blacksmith’s forge beneath Mount Etna in Sicily. Coincidentally, Vulcan was the name of the fictional home planet of Spock, the half-human first officer to Shatner’s Captain James T. Kirk.

Leonard Nimoy played the alien Mr. Spock in the "Star Trek" science-fiction television series and motion pictures. (NBC-TV/The Kobal Collection)

The SETI astronomers will now recommend the winning names to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), which determines the names of celestial bodies. The IAU, which is not required to accept the winning names, was expected to announce the new moons’ official names sometime this spring.

Additional World Book articles:

• New Horizons
• Space exploration
• Exploring the Suburban Solar System (a special report)
• Astronomy 1930 (Back in Time article)
• Astronomy 1978 (Back in Time article)
• Astronomy 2006 (Back in Time article)
• Space exploration 2006 (Back in Time article)

December 3, 2012

Today marked the 20th anniversary of a cornerstone of modern communication: text messaging. The first text—or SMS (short for short messaging service)—was sent by a 22-year-old British engineer named Neil Papworth in 1992. He sent it to Richard Jarvis, a colleague at Vodafone, the company that was developing SMS technology. The text read “Merry Christmas.”

Texts are associated with cell phones because the messages travel over the cell phone network. But in 1992, cell phones lacked any way to type letters. Thus, Papworth typed the historic text on a computer. The computer fed into Vodafone’s GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) cell phone network. Richard Jarvis received the message on an Orbitel 901 cell phone.

A young woman types text messages into a mobile phone in this photograph. People often exchange such brief messages when talking on the phone would be rude or inconvenient. (© Dreamstime)

Jarvis’s laptop-sized Orbitel 901, with its tiny gray screen and long, spiraling cord, might be confused for an ancient relic of a bygone civilization compared with the sleek smartphones of today. The lightning-fast evolution and miniaturization of cell phones since 1992 parallels the explosive growth of text messaging. Today, people around the world send trillions of texts each year. Along with such Internet-based communication as instant messaging and the social network website Twitter, text messaging has helped make short, typed messages a part of everyday life.

Additional World Book articles:

• Cyberbullying
• Freedom of speech
• Constant Comment: What’s All the Twitter About? (a Special Report)