Fire-Wired Blog

A couple weeks ago my wife Marieta and I traveled down to Kansas City for her 30th birthday. The best part about it was she knew we were going on a trip but didn't know where we were headed until the day of and even when she figured it out she didn't know any of our plans. The fun thing about going to Kansas City was neither of us much history with the city. My family went there a couple times when I was in grade school but I couldn't really remember any of the attractions, same thing for Marieta. So after booking our hotel room I burned up the keyboard searching for things to do . From my experience websites like Metromix and Citysearch are little help investigating our interests, and TripAdvisor is best used for hotels. For our purposes the KC Visitor Bureau, VisitKC.com , website was awesome. Everything's laid out for easy access, the site is really colorful and fun, you can find things based off your interests, there are little preview pictures and ma

Buying an iPad still makes little sense. Two years ago when the iPad was introduced I was at work with a bunch of fellow Apple fans. We were on Apple.com in a matter of seconds to check it out. Everyone was in awe of it... except me. I get that it means a lot for multi-media presentations and sales people but for the average person it's just an expensive add-on. iPhones and Androids I get; a computer in your pocket that you can use at any time to play games, access information and it allows you to keep every virtual thing you own in one place. An iPad... sure you can game on it (kind of) and you can watch movies on it (awkwardly) but for me why do you have to have an iPad? The Kindle Fire I get. It doesn't cram every little Android feature onto it. You're gonna use it to watch read books, movies, and surf the web. So it doesn't have GPS or a camera, okay... Isn't that better suited for your phone? Do you want to pull out something the size of a text

My most recent Tech Beat report for my day job explains the importance of backing up your digital information. Click here to read my "Around Osky Blog" post on my personal experiences with data loss .

It's over cable industry, I'm taking my money and going home. It may sound weird to read this considering the source , but I've had it. For the past 11 months I've been routinely forking over $120 to DirecTv for a product that goes out in a light rain, has far more channels than I would ever watch, and is completely overpriced. Yes it's a great product but my cable bill should not be greater than my cellphone bill. ESPECIALLY considering 65% of the cable industries content can be watched online. I don't care about on-demand movies. I don't care about the Golf Channel, the Game Show network, E!, Bravo, Reel, HSN, HLN, Spike, TRUtv, Lifetime, Oxygen... I don't care . Plus, their best content I can get over the air. CBS, NBC, FOX, PBS? You don't need a dish or a coax cable to get those, and Thanks to the digital conversion broadcast TV is finally bearable. And what I can't get over the air, I can find on Hulu, in the Redbox, or on TeamCo

Mixed media is king. That is exactly what I've been saying for years and now there's research to back it up. AND OF COURSE! ... the info comes in fun video, behold: This past April when I attended the National Association of Broadcasters convention I sat in on a lot of social media seminars -not so much for the information, but for verification. Every sessions mentioned if you want eyeballs, and loyal web visitors, you need mixed media. What is the #1 media they recommended? Video. If web visitors only spend 48 seconds on your site  how are they gonna remember you? Not from your boring text. Video hooks em. They want to know what you're showcasing. If it's short, they want to rewatch it. If it's long, and interesting enough, they'll share it. And if you're consistent showcasing quality, they'll return over and over and over... These are the bedrock reasons for why when I shoot a video for an organization I push for them to put it on th

I am a man who takes pride in his efficiency. In August when I edited my Farm Crawl video together, it took me about 7 hours. I sat down at 9 am and started picking out my soundbites, put it all together, wrote a couple songs for score music, and by the time I finalized it the clock said 4pm. This month the same thing deal happened when I put together my BfBl Harvest Party video , only it took me 5 hours. When I have a vision, and know my footage, I crush my projects.Yesterday I set my sights on a much loftier goal. Every morning when I'm eating breakfast and getting ready to start my day I think through what projects I'm working on. This week I've got two big projects to produce and a tight window to get them done. The travel show I co-produce, One Day Getaway , has an episode due on Nov 8, and the community interest show I occasionally produce, Oskaloosa Today , has an episode due on Nov 9. Well both projects have been shot and digitized, and all that remains is putt