NASA Will Host 150 People For Tweetup At Launch Of Jupiter-Bound Mission

Stephanie L. Schierholz

Headquarters, Washington                               

 

Veronica McGregor

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

WASHINGTON -- NASA will host a two-day launch Tweetup for 150 of its Twitter followers on Aug. 4 - 5 at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Tweetup is expected to culminate in the launch of the Jupiter-bound Juno spacecraft aboard an Atlas V rocket.

The launch window opens at 11:39 a.m. EDT on Aug. 5. The spacecraft is expected to arrive at Jupiter in 2016. The mission will investigate the gas giant's origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere. Juno's color camera will provide close-up images of Jupiter, including the first detailed glimpse of the planet's poles.

The Tweetup will provide @NASA Twitter followers with the opportunity to tour the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex; speak with scientists and engineers from the Juno and other upcoming missions; and, if all goes as scheduled, view the spacecraft launch. The event also will provide participants the opportunity to meet fellow tweeps and members of NASA's social media team.

Juno is the second of four space missions launching this year, making 2011 one of the busiest ever in planetary exploration. Aquarius was launched June 10 to study ocean salinity; Grail will launch Sept. 8 to study the moon's gravity field; and the Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity rover heads to the Red Planet no earlier than Nov. 25.

Tweetup registration opens at 3 p.m. on Friday, June 24, and closes at 3 p.m. on Monday, June 27. NASA will randomly select 150 participants from online registrations. For more information about the Tweetup and registration, visit http://www.nasa.gov/tweetup.

For information about connecting and collaborating with NASA, visit http://www.nasa.gov/connect.

Juno's principal investigator is Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the mission.

For more information, visit http://www.nasa.gov/juno and http://missionjuno.swri.edu.

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Why Email's Days Are Numbered

June 13, 2011

Facebooking at work may be a no-no, but more and more companies are encouraging their employees to chat, post and comment via enterprise social software, or ESS. These collaboration platforms – including Cisco Quad, Yammer, Jive, Traction Software, Socialtext, SocialCast, Salesforce.com Chatter, WizeHive and dozens of others – allow employees to discuss ideas, share documents, post news and ask questions with one another via posts, chats, microblogs and forums. Some of these applications, such as Cisco Quad, also include VoIP capabilities to enable real-time voice and video conferencing, as well as mobile apps to allow employees to collaborate while on the move.
But beyond the buzz, does ESS really help companies improve employee productivity and improve the bottom line?

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Contributed by Bob Johnson's Computer Stuff

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McAfee's Predicted Security Threats for 2010

McAfee recently released a report that predicts potential online security threats for 2010. To summarize, the anti-virus and computer security company, which is based out of Santa Clara, California, sees an increase in threats from social networking sites, banking security, and bot nets. In addition, they see increases in attacks targeting users, businesses, and applications. However, the findings weren't all negative. McAfee says they expect an increase in law enforcement and its effectiveness in fighting cybercrime.

As social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, become increasingly popular, they'll most likely become a breeding ground for cyber attacks. On top of the increased number, the attacks will be more sophisticated. Facebook users are particularly vulnerable due to the number of third party applications used. Games and other applications are popular and most people will trust an invitation from their friends without using caution. But that invitation could easily be malware or something else designed to harm your computer. There's really no way to protect yourself other than avoiding the third party apps such as quizzes and games.

URL shorteners such as bit.ly and tinyurl.com are also expected to become a target of cybercrime. These tie-in to social networking because most people use them to post links to their profiles. The websites shorten a normal URL into a smaller one that will fit in almost any space and is especially popular on Twitter, where you only have 140 characters to gets your message across. One major problem with these smaller URLs is that they can't be previewed, so clicking on one at random could lead you to somewhere you don't want to be. This makes it a very easy target for crooks.

Due to the popularity of Microsoft products, cyber criminals have been taking advantage of them for years. However, as programs such as Adobe Reader and Flash become more popular, McAfee expects they will become a bigger target, taking over the top "honor" from Microsoft. In 2009, Adobe Reader saw an increase of problems due to security holes, leading the company to take a more proactive approach to patching up problems.

Email attachments have always been a problem when it comes to spreading malware and that threat is expected to continue and even get bigger. The company expects an increase in specific targets when it comes to email, and those include journalists, corporations, and individual users who could easily be convinced to download an attachment that is hiding a Trojan or other bit of malware.

Other projected problems include banking Trojans. Normally used to get your financial information, McAfee expects them to become so advanced that they will start interrupting transactions and even withdrawing money from your accounts. 2009 already saw an increase in banking cybercrime, with many Trojans making their way past strong bank security. Botnets are also expected to be a threat. McAfee calls them a "leading infrastructure for cybercriminals" and says they are "used for actions from spamming to identity theft." While they are harder to track down due to their ability to move from computer to computer without a central base of operation, there has been some recent success in shutting them down.

Despite all the many threats, McAfee does project an increase in law enforcement's ability to track down cybercriminals. Even so, there are steps you should take to protect yourself. Purchasing security software and keeping it updated is very important and something everyone should do. Keeping your PC up-to-date with Microsoft patches that protect your operating system, office suite, and browser is also important. You should also be sure that you are aware of all the latest threats and realize what's at risk. Exercise caution when opening files or downloading applications.

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Twitter - It's All About Me?

Two Rutgers University Professors, Mor Naaman and Jeffrey Boase, set out to examines user behavior on social media websites such as Twitter and what they found is, well, probably not all that shocking. After looking at over 3,000 tweets from more than 350 Twitter users, it turns out, about 80 percent are what the professors now call "meformers," or people use who post updates on their everyday activities, feelings, thoughts, emotions and social lives. The other 20 percent, the "informers," are more about sharing information such as news articles and interacting with their followers. As a matter of fact, informers usually had more friends and followers than meformers. The median number for informers was 131 friends and 112 followers whereas meformers had a median of 61 friends and 43 followers.

While carefully documenting the details of their research, the professors determined that there are nine different types of Tweets: information sharing, self promotion, opinions and complaints, statements and random thoughts, me now, question to followers, presence maintenance, self-referential anecdotes, and anecdotes about others. A majority of tweets - about 41 percent - can be classified as "me now" tweets with random thoughts, and opinions and complaints coming in as the second most tweeted items.

The research doesn't portray Twitter users very positively, but most previous research done on the social medium has had the same findings, if not worse. Some studies have gone on to call Twitter users "narcissists" or claim that nearly half of all tweets are "pointless babble."

So what else did the study find? Informers usually mention other users more often by making @replies. About 25 percent of tweets come from users' mobile phones. Of those posted from phones, over half (51 percent) tend to be "me now" messages. Females were also more likely to post the "me now" messages; 45 percent of female users posted them whereas 37 percent of men did.

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