Aside from the small print and utter confusion with the 2010 annual report, I really enjoyed browsing through the rest of the Feltron Reports.  Check it out here.

The webpage was very simplistic and modern, both of which are qualities I admire.  The colors and font of the background and writing drew me in to feeling welcomed to the page.     I wanted to see more.  I mean, considering Nicholas Felton is a graphic designer I wouldn’t have expected anything less than a cutting edge webpage.

The content was very cool.  Other than the fact that I didn’t really care about where Felton travelled to in a given year, or how many tacos he ate, or what he took on his trip to China, I really like the idea of documenting one’s timeline in such an artistic way.  A question that came to mind is “who actually reads the Feltron Reports?”  It’s not like Nicholas Felton is a widely known iconic figure, I mean, he only has 20,576 followers on Twitter.  And also what is the purpose of the Feltron Reports?  The site has me wanting to start my own little documentation of life, perhaps call it the “Rahm Reports”?  But then again, I don’t think anyone wants to know how many tacos I ate in a given year either…

As I explored the site, I came to realize that his life wasn’t the only thing Felton was documenting.  A couple of the different types of reports I saw were his report on CNN.com and his report on budget traveling.  The one on CNN.com was actually requested by CNN for him to examine their web stats and provide them with a visual record of the site’s past 13 years.  Reading this reassured me that Felton’s work is indeed of importance.

I definitely find myself being on his webpage at times just to browse.  I found the site interesting and at times informative.  The creativity really drew my attention and I recommend others to check out his work.

So I figured what better place to create a historical map for other than my own backyard… Here’s an overlay of Washington D.C. in 1835 over current Washington D.C.

Initially, Hypercities seemed like the coolest and most innovative thing.  How awesome would it be to view the history of an exact location and see how it’s evolved over time?  As I  began to maneuvar through the site, some positive and negative aspects caught my eye.

I liked how the site had sort of an introductory page.  It helped me learn a little bit about what is in the site and how the site came about.  I was also able to get a grasp on how the site was put together.  I also liked that you don’t have to download Hypercities, unlike Google Earth, which you do have to download.  The intro page was also very welcoming.  The grey and yellow color contrast, and the layout of text and images seemed inviting to me.  Once I launched the site, I liked the bar on the top that indicated what years of maps I’d like to see.  I also like the feature to change the transparency of each map.

One of the things I didn’t like is that Hypercities, once launched was a bit slow.  And sometime very slow.  As I changed from one map to another in Los Angeles, the maps wouldn’t change as quickly as I’d like them to or not at all.  Some maps that I clicked on didn’t show up at all.  I also didn’t like how only 27 cities could be explored.  Understanding that the site is still in it’s Beta form, it still has a lot of improvements that need to be made.

All in all, the site was fun to explore.  It gave me a good idea about what it looks like to overlap one map on another.  I’m pretty thrilled to try it on my own.

Here is my attempt at creating a chart on Google chart editor.  I found it to be a bit troublesome.  It was somewhat difficult to maneuver through the tabs and figure out which aspect of the graph is under which tab.  The chart editor is still in it’s beta form, and it is very apparent when using the site.  All in all, there are obvious improvements that need to be made to Google chart editor but I’m not crying about it.

Here is my attempt at making a map on Google maps.  It was pretty easy to search a location and drop a pin on it.  I like that you can add descriptions to each pin.  I’m not entirely sure as to what the lines are for.. First I drew a huge line connecting all my points of interest, then deleted it after realizing it was stupid.  Bottom line is that I like Google maps.  I might actually create a map or two in my free time, especially if I’m trying to create an agenda of things to do when I’m on vacation.

Reading “Passwords Under Assault” by Dan Goodin was a little frightening.  It turns out that many people are facing problems on their private sites due to hacking.  Hacking has become a huge threat to users on the Internet, leaving most of us vulnerable to it’s risks.

A point that was brought up many times in the article was that so many people reuse certain passwords for more that one site at a time.  Goodin mentioned that the average Web user maintains 25 separate accounts but uses just 6.5 passwords to protect them, according to a landmark study (PDF) from 2007.  Those numbers seem about right to me, considering I am also guilty of being one of these people.  The password I use for Facebook, I also use on Twitter, my back account, email, and various other sites.  After reading the article and as I write this post, I think to myself that I might as well go ahead and display my password on here because it seems as if it wouldn’t be very difficult for a hacker or you to obtain it yourselves.

According to the article, some of the methods of creating passwords I once thought were safe are not so safe after all.  I had heard that writing out a word and then writing the same word backwards (pantsstnap) was a good way to throw the hackers off, but it turns out that most of the time their creepy ideologies can see past tricks like that.

I’ve learned that creating sentences is a smart way to go about making a strong password.   Sentences are difficult for hackers to decode because it could be a variation of many different words.  If there is a character limit on the password, the first letter of the first word in the sentence can make up the password.  Another useful trick is the use of punctuation. Punctuation makes a code extremely strong.  Adding a “!” to a word or sentence makes it more difficult to crack.

Now that I know the difference between weak and strong passwords, I definitely have to reevaluate my password construction.  I’ll surely be changing a lot of passwords in the near future.

The TV News Archive was extremely fascinating to me.  I think that to be able to have years of news broadcasts at one’s fingertips is simply brilliant.  I personally love watching the news whether it is current or not.  The way news is broadcasted really draws me in to the content for some reason so for a person like me, this website is pure excitement.

If the moon falls out of the sky (hypothetically) and news reporters are broadcasting it live on NBC, to think that people 100 years from then would be able to watch the live footage as it was happening is simply amazing.  I think the TV News Archive website is a great way of preserving history.

Even though the team behind TV News didn’t consult every news station before displaying their content on the site, they shouldn’t run into any legal problems.  TV News Archive is a nonprofit organization simply providing an archive of information that would have otherwise been inaccessible.  On top of it being nonprofit, the organization is also for educational purposes, making it the least bit of a threat.  Also, the videos on the site are not 100% current.  The newest videos are at least 24 hours old, therefore it isn’t interfering with whether or not people watch the news on television… considering that most like their news to be very up-to-date.

News is an important aspect of everyday lives of individuals and to be able to preserve the content in video form is a great accomplishment.  Now that I’ve been introduced to this site, I definitely imagine myself referring back to it in the future.

** Plus, if I was on live tv news one day and wanted to see it for myself when I got home, I could simply tune into this site and search for my clip!