I know the assignment was  to read only two of Felton Reports, but I have to say, I found them incredibly interesting, so I ended up browsing through numerous ones. The data that this man collects and manages to condense into these reports is truly fascinating and I highly suggest that  people take time to at least scrim through them. I found the 2010-2011 quite interesting in the way that he modeled the report by graphing it by who he was with. It was intriguing to look at the graphs, images, and charts and noticing trends or any kind of correlation between the people he was with. What makes the reports even more interesting, is how evolved and advanced his report became over the years. For instance, the 2005 report is very simple compared to the others, and is comprised of simple graphs and images. That is not to say that it is any less interesting, but you can definitely see the advancements in technology and skill from each report.

I never knew that sites like these existed, and now that I do, it is fascinating to see how we can so easily document our lives. If people took the time, I think everyone could report their lives just like Felton. It would require tremendous work, but it would be fascinating to see. You can learn so many facts about a person from these little tad bits of information. But, not only is is beneficial for people to learn facts about yourself, but you can also help yourself learns facts about yourself. There would be so many re-occurring themes if I did reports like these, and you can even find some in Felton’s reports. All in all, these reports were extremely fascinating to look at, and I think tools like these should be more open for regular people to exploit.

This week, I found the entire website, ‘Hypercities.com,’ to be incredibly interesting. It may sound a little strange, but I had no idea that there was a site like this for people to use freely. Sites like this I feel are extremely important and useful for people to use in order for research and just to explore the past. I was surprised to see how in depth the maps were and was impressed by the detail some contained. I am not sure if was actually reading any of them correctly, but besides that, they were very cool to look at.

I think technology and websites like this are good signs of advancement in technology for us. A lot of times, people always debate whether or not technology is considered “good advancement” due to the fact that the cyber world has now become dangerous, well some parts of it anyways. However, sites like this aim to be informative, innovative, and helpful. Students who are interested in this field of work now have an advanced outlet to practice through. Since the world is moving into a digital age, technology like this needs to be available for younger collaborators to use, which makes this tool so useful. I am not sure how long it takes to produce one of these maps, or how long it takes to upload it onto the site, but the site itself appears to be quite impressive. People can learn a lot about every day cities from here and always go into the past and discover ancient cities.

This week’s readings covered the topic of password security and the fact that now, more than ever, there are people hacking into accounts and erasing or stealing property. The whole idea of a person being able to see the accounts and have control of the applications you use personally is terrifying. In a sense, it is almost like having a robber break into your house in the middle of the night. The only difference is that online hackings can happen at anytime and anywhere. Most of the time, victims do not realize they have been hacked until hours the damage has been dealt. I have never been hacked myself, but I can imagine the horror of losing precious data, or knowing that some stranger knows all of my personal information.

As for the whole ideal with the iCloud devices, this is precisely why I try to avoid using of the new technology. My brother uses Cloud to store all of his data between the multiple devices he uses for media. I try to tell him that it is not safe considering that if a person got a hold of his account for the cloud, the hacker would have access to all of his devices.Unfortunately, I think one of the problems that we are facing as a society, is that people are so quick to give up safety for accessibility. Companies tell us that their networks are secure and that setting up multiple passwords and accepting confirmation e-mails will protect our account, but that is all horse crap. I remember recently when Sony had thousands of their Playstation Network user’s accounts hacked. Thankfully only handfuls of credit card information were stolen, but that is beside the point.

Companies can never guarantee the safety of online accounts. People think that a long password will protect them, but hackers are always finding ways around security. To me it seems like that the technology hackers use are always one step ahead of any security system that is created. It sounds ridiculous, but  I think hackers could easily find jobs working for major companies by hacking into their networks. By having an internal source hack into your own system before a foreign source does, maybe we can be better prepared. After this post, I will be changing my password to something hopefully a bit more secure. Longer passwords always equal more security right?