Fire-Wired Blog

This article was first published by dmcityview.com After years of swimming against the tide, I finally broke down and bought a tablet last week. While I still feel they have little value outside of watching videos and surfing the Web, tablets are an extremely convenient way to share multimedia content and cut back on paper use. Outside of practical concerns, one perk of purchasing a tablet is Flipboard, an application that turns virtually any Web content into personalized magazines. It’s no coincidence that tablets are roughly the size of the average magazine, and reading Internet content on them is extremely easy. Flipboard takes both those virtues and turns the Internet into a bottomless pit of reading material, tailored to the reader’s interests. Plus, like the random magazines that drift into our lives, Flipboard is a great way to discover content that sits in the periphery of our interests. Launched in 2010, Flipboard allows mobile device users to search the Web and subscrib...

This article was first published by dmcityview.com A universal experience in personal computing is the moment when we sit down to do some work only to discover our computer can barely keep up. You don’t know if it’s a virus, too many programs running or old age, but whatever the reason, there is no mistaking when a computer is officially past its prime. While the thrifty user will upgrade his or her antivirus protection or computer memory, many take the nuclear option and replace their misfiring machine wholesale. Ten years ago this scenario meant an easy swap: Replace computer tower “A” with shiny, new computer tower “B.” Today, shoppers have platform options galore, and more often than not, they’re ditching their stationary setup. Compared to 2012 sales, PCs are being overlooked by consumers in record numbers with users opting for more mobile computing options, such as tablets and smartphones. In fact, desktop producing juggernauts such as Hewlett Packard and Dell have seen sal...

15 months ago I left the journalism world, this was a really hard decision. Growing up I routinely watched the nightly news while my mom prepared dinner. I quickly fell in love with the storytelling aspect of a journalists life and the fact they were reporting on something different practically every day. So following my dream to be a rockstar, my life's ambition was to be a reporter.  In route to that dream I carried a videocamera with me practically everyday, worked for a few news radio stations, PA'd at local CBS is San Francisco and eventually became a small town reporter and T.V. Producer. So why did I drop the dream? Two reasons: my mortgage and the hope to one day provide sole support to family, so my wife can be a stay-at-home mom (her dream). While I may be out of the journalism game at the moment, there is a simple way to keep the dream alive; freelancing. Back in February, I applied to the local alternative newspaper, Cityview , for a freelance tech col...

This article was first published by dmcityview.com Last week I survived something I will forever deem the most treacherous act of technological perpetration in my life, full stop. After almost eight years of uninterrupted service, Google shuttered its longstanding RSS reading service, Google Reader. RSS (Rich Site Summary) feeds are the paper delivery boy of the Internet. Millions of websites use RSS feeds to syndicate content automatically to website subscribers. Nearly every major website and news distributor on the planet uses this technology to deliver content; CNN, ESPN, Google News, Twitter, Facebook and many, many more. RSS Readers, such as Google Reader, allow users to aggregate and subscribe to these feeds and bypass the need to visit dozens of sites each day for news and entertainment. While Google gave plenty of warning that it was terminating its RSS reader site, for diehard content curators such as myself, it was a devastating gut punch. While Reader wasn’t the most ...

This article was first published by dmcityview.com You may not be aware, but you are living in a war zone. Central Iowa is currently besieged by two warring factions that are fighting for the future of our very existence. Why haven’t you heard anything about this on the news? Because it’s occurring on a plane of existence only visible through specially-equipped devices… and it’s a game. Last November Google unveiled “Ingress,” a free, augmented-reality, geocaching mobile game. While most video games are played on computers and gaming consoles, Ingress is played in the real world with smartphones. Similar to other role-playing games, Ingress players (known as agents) collect weapons, attack points and claim battle sites known as “portals.” Plus players are split into two factions: the Resistance and the Enlightened. While that may all sound like the recipe for yet another nerdy video game, the tech and effort required to actually play Ingress are really cool. Augmented-reality is ...