A 15-year-old boy from Georgia (the country, not the state) has broken a Guinness World Record for the fastest typing on an iPad. I know what you are thinking, and yes, I am surprised that the new record holder is not a 13-year-old girl as well.

All kidding aside, Eduard Saakashvili’s test of speed was to see how fast he could type the American alphabet on the iPad’s qwerty touch keyboard. He was given three tries but needed only one to break the record. He typed the alphabet in 5.26 seconds, besting the previous record holder by 1.05 seconds. Somewhere in Britain, Charlie Joseph McDonnell is furious.

Eduard Saakashvili isn’t just any Georgian teen, but he is the son of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.

According to the Guinness World Record blog, Eduard prepared for months to break the record.

“Our whole family has been nervous. I am a very proud mummy today,” said the President wife, Sandra Roelofs. She was on hand at the Batumi resort on the Black Sea when her son broke the record.

Check out a video of the event below. He breaks the record in the first 30 seconds -

This feat got me thinking about other unusual Guinness World records and boy are there some strange ones. An Italian man holds the record for most books typed backwards on blank keyboards without looking at the screen. He typed 68 whole books that way, in their original language.

I bet he couldn’t have done it on an iPad.

This involves not the American state, mind you, but the small country that Russia fought using both tanks and hackers.  And today actually marks the first anniversary of the start of that conflict.

It makes sense, then, that Bill Woodcock, research director of the Packet Clearing House, was able to conclude that yesterday’s DDoS attacks were directed at a blogger who goes by the name of Cyxymu.

Max Kelly, Facebook’s chief security officer at Facebook, also confirmed to Elinor Mills, "It was a simultaneous attack across a number of properties targeting him to keep his voice from being heard."  (Note: you can read Cyxymu’s mostly-in-Russian thoughts here and here.)

Unfortunately, no one’s able to prove just yet who or what was behind the assault.  But with Twitter, Facebook, and Google all on the hunt (along with many security companies and random interested individuals), it may not be long before we receive some more answers.

Google product manager Dave Barth reported that the company simply found map data for these countries unacceptable, but they are open to suggestion.

"We’re hearing from our users that they would rather see even very basic coverage of a country than see nothing at all," wrote Barth. "That certainly makes sense, and so we have started preparing data for the handful of countries that are still blank on Google Maps. Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, as well as other significant regions of the world will benefit from this effort."

Russia seems to know where they’re going. Maybe Google should ask them.
 

The Times Online was unable to get confirmation from security experts that massive DDoS attacks on Georgian websites had actually occurred, at least at the level of the attacks on Estonian systems last year. The best they could come up with was what one German expert called "low-level vandalism," and not evidence of "widescale, state-sanctioned electronic warfare."

At the time (July 25), the Georgian government also denied any extensive or prolonged damage—"not even for a minute." Today, official sites mod.gov.ge and president.gov.ge have been inaccessible for a considerably larger amount of time.

According to the Georgian Times, these (assumedly) same hackers have targeted Georgian news organizations as well, making it difficult to post new information online. Internet portal Georgia Online announced hackers had destroyed analytical resources, the entire Abkhazia government website, and databases and archives of other unnamed news sources.

One Blogspot blogger, who runs a blog with the purpose of tracking and reporting on the actions of a Russian organized cybercrime group called Russian Business Network, credits the same network with apparent attacks on government sites in conjunction with the physical war.

Google could not confirm Georgian government use of Blogger as an alternative channel to disseminate information, but several blogs devoted to Georgian causes and purported to be set up by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have popped up.

The assumed MFA author of GeorgiaMFA.blogspot.com, for example, has accused Russia of seriously disrupting several sites and recommends the Polish president’s site as an additional source of information.

There are several links to other Georgian sites hosted on Blogger as well, including RussiaAndGeorgiaAtWar, which provides eyewitness reports like this one:

Vasiko, 31 , Lawyer: I went to the Republican Clinic to see my friend Beka, who was transported from Gori. Time to time lots of ambulances were bringing in wounded soldiers. Seeing the vehicles the parents of the soldiers started crying and screaming. They were calling: "Name, tell the name?" Than everyone were getting quiet and were saying prayers:" Oh, God, let me see my son wounded but alive." And this was going on and on with each ambulance.

Another from a taxi driver compares Vladimir Putin to Satan, and calls on the US and Europe to stand up to "the Devil." Another blog, titled StateMinister and purporting to be another government replacement site, posts photos of the carnage, including killed Georgian citizens and burning buildings.

StopRussia.org is also offline.