Fire-Wired Blog

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com There is truly no better time of year to give or get a gift than right now. No matter if you’re Christian, Jewish, celebrate Kwanzaa or simply indulge in the spirit of the season, it seems most people embrace the giving spirit that comes with December. Chances are you already have all your gifts purchased, wrapped and ready to set under the tree. You’ve bought your kids some toys, your dog a squeaky toy, and you’re all excited for your spouse to rip open his or her gift of a shiny new tech gadget. Well, not to go all Grinch on you, but a huge swath of the hot tech gadgets on the market are pointless and simply bad gifts. Take a moment to look at your smart phone, the wondrous piece of technology most of us gift ourselves every two years (when our cellular service provider ends). Your smart phone is a camera, a computer, a health tracker, a gaming station, an entertainment gateway, a backup storage device, a universal remote, an...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com What makes America so great? Without hesitation, you should have answered, “the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.” The Declaration states that each and every American is afforded the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The Constitution institutes the right to bear arms, protection from illegal search and seizure, the right to a trial by jury, and among many other rights, the right to freedom of speech. With few exceptions, the First Amendment allows Americans to be as truthful and tactless as they wish, free from governmental or legal entanglement… that is, however, until you say something threatening on the Internet. Visit the comment section of nearly any article online and you will likely discover some of the most vile, hateful speech imaginable. Almost any site where a user can be anonymous — such as Twitter or YouTube — is littered with filth, threats and slander. Sites such as Facebook a...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com In 1963, when Andy Williams recorded “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” he must have immediately recognized it was an instant holiday classic. What he couldn’t have known is, starting the day after Thanksgiving, his voice would come to fill every elevator, mall and superstore until the end of time. While I have never personally partaken in the shopping free-for-all that is Black Friday, I’ve always gotten a chuckle from the thought of Williams’ voice joyously ringing from Target’s PA system as enraged mothers battle over Nintendo DSs and My Little Pony figurines. Thankfully, for those of us who have zero desire to camp out in front of Best Buy in late November, there is the Internet, and three days after Black Friday comes Cyber Monday. While Black Friday sales figures have started to decline over the last decade, Cyber Monday has grown by leaps and bounds. According to IBM, Cyber Monday 2014 sales grew by 8.5 percent ...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com There are two things that launch upstart social networks from nothing to necessities: a feature that isn’t offered anywhere else, and being cool. While coming up with an original social network feature seems nearly impossible, being cool and maintaining can be much harder. Friendster, MySpace, and even America Online — the original social network — all brought something to the table the Web hadn’t seen before only to eventually lose their user appeal. For Friendster it was the lack of interaction, for Myspace it was an ugly interface and oversaturation of ads, and for America Online it was the ’90s software mentality that never translated to the browser-based Internet that took over around the turn of the century. Are Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, YouTube, Quora, LinkedIn, Instagram, Vine and Snapchat all cool? Yes; some definitely more than others. But each has its fervent audience. It seems that, with regard to the Internet...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com “On a long enough timeline the survival for everyone drops to zero.” That paragon of pessimism comes courtesy of Chuck Palahniuk’s “Fight Club,” and the disturbing wisdom of the phrase can be applied to pretty much everything. Your career, your life, our planet — all of it will one day cease to be. This same principle applies to businesses as well. Standard Oil, Kodak and Lehman Brothers are just few examples of corporate juggernauts who once dominated an industry before falling to father time. The tech industry is no different. However, as the Internet nears 25 years old, some falling giants refuse to give in to their mortality. Case in point? Yahoo. For all the billions of dollars the Internet has generated, none of it would be possible without the search engine. Of course Google is currently the king of searching the information superhighway, but it was far from the first. Webcrawler, AltaVista, Lycos and many more started ...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com Americans have a fantastic talent for yielding to malfeasance. Political shenanigans, continually rising college tuition, highway traffic jams, movie spoilers — these things and many more eventually become a fact of life to which we all acquiesce. As far as tech grievances go, as products evolve many annoyances are cleared up. (Remember when you could only send text messages to people on the same carrier as you? That was the worst.) Still, as we lose tech issues to complain about, the worst one of them still remains: connection speeds. Something is horrendously wrong when the United States ranks 10th in the world in Internet speed. We invented, populated and basically run the Internet, yet somehow our Internet is slower than Latvia and the Czech Republic. Basic high-speed Internet packages in South Korea, which has the fastest connection speeds on the planet, outpace Des Moines’ basic connections 8 to 1. For a state that proudl...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com It appears within 10 years the Internet will be one giant television. Every major Web entity is creating video content. Connections are slowly climbing to speeds that will easily stream virtually anything. It seems the only obstacle without a clear path to get around is organization. How will users be able to aggregate all the disparate content they’ve subscribed to across the Internet? I see an answer in Plex, a Web content DVR. Last week, HBO finally announced it was getting into the Web streaming arena. The premium cable channel will continue broadcasting on television, however, non-cable subscribers can now access HBO content online through a Web-only subscription. With this announcement, the list of major media providers that offer gated streaming video is getting quite crowded. In addition to HBO, there is Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, YouTube, Yahoo, Sony, AOL and more than 100 others. Searching content across all of these sit...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com Everyone likes to feel like he or she is creative. Whether you’re a photographer, an accountant or a plumber, artistry can found in practically any vocation. Still, the common definition of creativity looks to visual and auditory mediums such as paintings and jazz for the truly talented, and if one tech company has that segment of imagination cornered, it’s Adobe. Twenty-six years ago, Photoshop was invented, and the world was forever changed. Prior to its arrival, coloring, editing and perfecting images was mainly a darkroom task. Photoshop changed that forever. Today, Photoshop dominates the digital imaging world with millions of photographers, designers and creators using the software. It is so popular, “photoshopped” has become a noun for an obviously-doctored image. As popular as Photoshop is, after Adobe purchased it in 1988, the applications it inspired and spawned changed the creative world. Beyond Photoshop, Adobe com...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com When marketing works, it really works. “Got Milk?” “Just Do It.” “Save Money. Live Better.” These slogans not only drilled their way into the brains of millions of Americans, they sold billions of products. In 2008, Apple — a company renowned for its design and branding — joined the pantheon of marketing taglines with its iPhone slogan, “There’s an App for that.” What made Apple’s catchphrase so powerful was the truth therein; iPhone users could find an application for everything from word processing to video gaming. Today the constellation of app possibilities continues to grow with Good2Go, a private messaging service designed to verbalize sexual consent. Last year, when Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston was publicly investigated for alleged sexual assault, the nebulous world of collegiate definition of sexual consent became a hot news item. Does sexual consent need to be explicit with those about to get frisky agreein...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com Apple’s iWatch looks beautiful. It is a stone cold fact that cannot be denied. The problem comes when you try to nail down its purpose. We’ve all heard the old chestnut “necessity is the mother of invention.” After you take a good long look at the iWatch, there is no denying it is completely unnecessary. Year in and year out, since the rise of the affordable personal computer in the mid 1980s, technology has been society’s problem-solving wizard. Laptops allowed us to work anywhere, iPods allowed us to carry our entire music library with us at all times, and smartphones kept us connected to each other, information and basically our entire lives. Other gadgets have come along to make these innovations more luxurious (iPads, set-top boxes, George Foreman grills…), but none of them are true necessities. Since Steve Jobs’ passing, everyone from impatient stockholders to your Facebook-addicted grandma has been waiting for Apple’s n...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com How long are you willing to wait for a website to load? Five seconds? Ten seconds? Good God, don’t let it happen to me… 15 seconds! Over the last two decades, researchers have found the duration of the American attention span to be dwindling and dwindling. It’s gotten so bad that in 2014 our interests can only be held for a shameful short eight seconds, and tech is one of the leading focus killers. What’s the worse part of any YouTube video? The five seconds we’re forced to watch advertisements before a cat video rolls. What is the maximum amount of characters in a tweet? One-hundred-forty characters, or roughly 30 words, which happens to be just about eight seconds. How long are Vine videos? Six seconds max. This seems really short until you sit through a 15-second Instagram video that never seems to end. The unwritten rule that brevity equals relevancy has a stranglehold on tech. But in all fairness, marketers, entertainer...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com Since the turn of century, when the Internet began consuming our attention spans, we’ve all been champions of “Revolution Free.” Napster started the uprising with free music, content aggregators such as Google News and Huffington Post stoked the flames with free news, torrent services gave us entertainment, and social networks gave us communication. While paywalls are starting to cordon off online content, the pulse of the revolution still beats with YouTube as its heart. The idea of free online is, for all intents and purposes, a lie. Whether it’s your local newspaper, CNN.com, Hulu, or even YouTube, all online content providers must pay delivery, storage and also the pesky matter of compensating producers. How are these bills satiated? Advertising. And while others have turned to premium, subscription-guarded content, YouTube has subsisted on advertising for nearly a decade. Whether you’re uploading to or streaming from Yo...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com One of my favorite George Carlin’s one liners was simply “Stay tuned, China’s gonna win.” The sentiment is easy enough. China is a sleeping giant whose might will one day make it the crowning super power. Extending this metaphor to the tech world, the obvious China substitute is Amazon with 2014 being the year it comes out from behind the silicon curtain. In the past nine months, Amazon has released a set top box, its first smartphone, a string of critically acclaimed original TV streaming content, and just last month purchased streaming gaming site Twitch, the largest acquisition in the company’s history. Amazon’s bread will always be buttered by online retail, but these recent power plays represent the company expanding into content delivery, telecommunications, the entertainment world and the fervent gaming industry. Nothing at Amazon is done in haste. It waited almost a decade before entering the smartphone market, and i...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com It seems in the tech world, if you are not an immediate hit, you are destined to be a failure. However, there are those who hang on and wait for the world to realize the utility of their service. For Skype, it has been an extremely rocky 11 years, but it is officially time to announce it as the premiere video chatting software. When Skype was first released in 2003, the value of a video conferencing service was immediately recognizable. Video conferencing existed, but it required a very fast Internet connection and expensive hardware from companies such as Cisco. Skype allowed anyone with a computer, a web cam and a microphone to talk face to face over the Internet, and in many situations, for free. While everyone recognized the utility, few people actually used the service, and of its small user base, few were paying customers. This lack of revenue lead to a long, near fatal road for the company. Seen as a hot commodity, Sk...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com When you run down the reasons for being on different social networks, so many are clear as day; Facebook connects you with friends and family, Twitter gives us insight into public discourse, and Pinterest illuminates the creative works of the world. For these and a handful of others, the utility of their site is obvious. However, for every thriving network, there are half a dozen useless sites. Topping the list of trivial online communities is LinkedIn Before you get indignant, I freely admit that I — like 300 million others — have a profile that I occasionally update on LinkedIn. At first blush, the utility of the site makes sense: a network for job seekers and business professionals allowing them to network (in the way your dad and college career counselor champion). Thousands of companies use the site to promote their brand and allow job seekers to follow their career opportunities. The problem is, outside of providing a ...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com As cool as Justin Timberlake is, what’s the first thing you think of when you hear his name? He’s a singer, right? Nevermind that for the  last decade J.T. has been trying desperately to be taken seriously as an actor. Shifting public perception is hard — for entertainers, politicians, companies, even websites. No one is learning that lesson harder than the once-popular location-based application Foursquare. In 2009, at the South By Southwest Interactive technology conference, or SXSWi, Foursquare dominated the hearts and minds of the tech world. Foursquare provided a social network for smartphone users to check in online to locations and share with their friends where parties were, what restaurants were exciting, and basically any location that was happening at that moment. The cherry on top of the GPS cake was Foursquare’s scoreboard for user check-ins, “Mayorships” for users who checked in the most at specific locatio...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com The parallels between tech companies and historical empires that have risen to soaring heights only to one day crumble to ruins is disturbingly similar. While Microsoft, Apple and IBM have somehow thrived for decades, they’ve marched by the graves of giants such as BlackBerry, Polaroid and Zenith. Similar to those fallen nations, the fall of those companies was a long, painful process that many saw coming. Such is the current story of Sony. Few companies have squandered their multifaceted fortune such as Sony. From the 1970s to the 1990s Sony was one of the top dogs in home entertainment systems, audio and video recording, disk storage and more. Today the Japanese multinational conglomerate has expanded to include cinematic cameras, video game systems, computers and least well-known here in the States, insurance. The problem with all of these separate endeavors is none of them own a respective market, and altogether, none of...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com The tablet is a quandary; it’s a stretched out smartphone that supposedly offers a computing environment similar to a laptop or desktop. Its size allows for easier reading, and its mobility offers the ability to work practically anywhere imaginable. Even with these advantages over smartphones and stationary computing systems, tablets are not tech necessities. In fact, as sales are starting to show, owning a tablet is most definitely a luxury. Even prior to its initial release in 2010, Apple’s iPad was a hot commodity. Everyone had fallen in love with the iPhone and thought a tablet version not only made sense but would revolutionize computing. Four years later, the iPad is still cool, but the revolution never came to pass. Altogether 195 million tablets were sold in 2013. But what a difference a year makes. Whereas the iPhone continues to see growth in sales, the iPad has actually seen a 10 percent sales dip over the last ni...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com Everyone has that one gadget in the house that runs perfectly for years and then unexpectedly falls apart. It might be the disc tray on your Blu-ray player or the ceiling fan that pops a screw. For me it was a waffle iron that snapped its hinge in the middle of breakfast. The industrious among us might head to the hardware store and replace the broken part, but more often than not it seems those adventures are exercises in futility. Thankfully, there is an advancement in manufacturing that promises to end these nightmares: the 3D printer. As if taken straight from Star Trek, 3D printers take digital three-dimensional models of real-world objects and physically produce them using epoxy resins and malleable plastics. First actualized in the mid 1980s, 3D printers have only recently become fiscally and technologically feasible to be used as a means of parts production. As with many new technologies, 3D printers run the gamut of...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com The list of things couples should avoid to ensure a happy marriage is long and treacherous. Topping the list are the common hotspots of long-distance relationships, airing dirty laundry in public and, of course, working together. One of the more stressful shared work experiences a couple can endure is the monumental task of producing a film, a venture that requires a creative mindset, technical know–how, business acumen and unending patience. Even with all the potential pitfalls that come with filmmaking, Des Moines couple Nick Wilson and Sarah Noll Wilson have been successfully producing short films together for seven years as participants of the 48 Hour Film Project, as the leaders of Team Team (a redundant name they never expected to stick). While it isn’t the marathon task of producing a multi-million-dollar feature film, the 48 Hour Film Project is a stress-filled weekend that puts local producers’ storytelling prowess t...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com Of all the innovations and gifts Bill Gates gave the world of technology, the one that has crossed over more than any other is the idea that “Content is King.” Written as part of an open essay in 1996, Gates’ proclamed that in order to succeed in the burgeoning online consumer space, websites and services needed to provide original and alluring content. This “Moses on the Mount” decree is as true today as it was 20 years ago. I hate this phrase. “Content is King” has become the war cry of editors, news directors, and basically every content supervisor the world, and half of them have no clue what it means. To these people, it’s a way of saying, “Do your job,” or “What have you done for me lately?” But for a more accurate understanding, one needs to look no farther than the battle for online eyeballs. Every online media giant wants your attention. Netflix wants your subscription dollars; Google, YouTube, Hulu, Yahoo want your...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com In today’s world, technology is inescapable. When we’re not spending our working hours staring at computer screens, our eyes are fixed on TVs, tablets and the ubiquitous smartphone. This environment is the reason so many companies want a piece of the action. It seems every business wants to build an application, operating system and, most prevalent, proprietary phones. After Apple reset the industry with the iPhone, every tech company — including Google, Microsoft, Samsung and the better-late-than-never Amazon — unveiled its own smartphone. Building a company-branded phone allows organizations ground floor access to consumer behavior and purchase patterns, and as the world’s biggest online retailer, no one wants this data more than Amazon, who introduced its first smartphone, the Fire, last month. Of course, to enter the Android- and Apple-dominated marketplace, it needed a killer feature. Amazon’s must-have? “Firefly.” Sold...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com Continuous growth is the demand of every shareholder and blight of every company. Everyone from CEOs down to mailroom clerks wants to rake in profits as much as investors, but failure to recoup bigger and bigger profits can quickly kill their job and reputation. How do companies bring in new riches? Through diversification or innovation. To stay relevant and profitable, practically every company must diverge from its initial path. Microsoft started as a software company, Apple was a computer manufacturer, Google a search engine and Facebook a social network. While all these companies still hold a major footing in these arenas, they’ve all pushed into other industries with varying levels of success. Apple makes the majority of its profits from phones and digital sales, Google is in advertising, software development and content distribution, and after entering the stock market in 2012, Facebook started spraying a firehose of cas...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com Why is it so many cool technologies force you to break the law? Force might be a little much, but at the very least, cloud storage, social GPS, web-based DVR, web video platforms and many, many more new technologies put users in situations to make illegal choices, and so many of us do. Last year, one of the hottest applications on the market was the social navigation application Waze. Using a smartphone’s GPS technology, real-time user shared traffic updates and gamification, Waze practically demands users to become distracted drivers. Beyond giving turn-by-turn navigation, Waze users can share police sightings, traffic jams, accidents, road hazards, gas prices and detours all while behind the wheel. While these updates are extremely useful to commuters, users reporting them are most certainly not giving the road their undivided attention. Thankfully, breaking and bending the law via technology today doesn’t carry the punish...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com With more platforms than ever before, entertainment dollars are stretched thin these days. Everything from live entertainment and cable television to smartphones and physical media such as DVDs are fighting for a piece of your expendable income. In this entertainment tug of war, few industries are struggling to hold their ground more than consoling gaming. In reality, the gaming industry is doing gangbusters. In 2012, all arms of the gaming world raked in a cumulative $67 billion, and in 2017 it’s projected to take in $82 billion. Still, the console gaming is battling to pull its weight. Gamers might be quick to point to Nintendo’s joke of a console, the Wii U, as the offending party, but Microsoft’s XBox One and Sony’s Playstation 4 are also falling short of previous sales benchmarks. The main reason for declining console revenues is obvious, PC and mobile gaming revenues are cannibalizing console dollars. What’s worse for ...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com With almost a season-like quality to it, the tech industry follows a cycle. New products are released in late summer, research and development throughout fall and winter, and spring and summer is all about hype. So what is the hype medium of choice? Giant conferences. Since the release of the original iPhone in 2007, tech conferences have been the fuel for the application developer fire. Smartphones existed before the iPhone. However, the game changer was third party app developers. Twitter, Evernote, Swype — these and many more smartphone must-haves started as small-scale apps, and the next thumb-powered wonder app might be generated because companies like Google and Apple piqued programmers at a conference. Conferences such as South by Southwest are legendary for launching Twitter and Foursquare, but as Apple’s recent developer conference shows, these massive tech venues might also be an app’s downfall. Apple used its conf...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com Some of you are sharing far too much information online. I’m not talking about pictures of your post-workout abs or nauseating details of your child’s bowel movements. No, this over-sharing is most likely a complete oversight on your behalf. Chances are, on a routine basis you are sharing your exact GPS location, contact list, screengrabs of your smartphone and much more. How is this happening? Through the permissions and settings you agree to while downloading smartphone applications. The easiest way to test your online exposure is with Twitter. One feature many Twitter-users overlook is the tweet location setting, and, unless you’ve investigated the default GPS tweet setting, you’re sharing your exact location with the world. To test if you’re tweeting your whereabouts, visit your personal Twitter profile, click on one of your tweets and, if you see the word “from” below your tweet, then you’re found. Examples like this ar...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com On the list of ground-zero major benchmarks in computer history is Alan Turning, the man first conceived of algorithms who helped develop computer science with The Atanasoff-Berry Computer (famously created at Iowa State University) and the invention of readable programming code. Computer programmers celebrated one of these innovation’s 50-year birthday last week — the birth of “BASIC,” the programming language created by Dartmouth professors John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz. As opposed to generational gadgets eventually retired to landfills across the globe, programming languages never die. BASIC, along with COBOL, FORTRAN and others, were invented decades before the Internet and are still used today. What sets BASIC apart, though, is that it changed computer programming from mainframes and punch cards to readable code requiring no advanced degree in mathematics to understand. BASIC computers were literally giant calculators th...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com The last few months have been extremely tumultuous pertaining to the future of the Internet. Prior to a federal Appeals Court ruling in January, all Web content was legally required to be treated the same: Streaming video needed to be loaded on users’ computers at the same speed as someone reading a simple blog. However in January, a Washington, D.C.,-based Appeals Court abolished that rule, stating that the Federal Communications Commission misclassified Internet Service Providers and thereby lacked the legal justification to set such a rule. This immediately changed the landscape of the Internet. The FCC has come up with a new set of Net neutrality guidelines. Under its proposed “Open Internet” rules, Web content can not be blocked or throttled by ISPs, but providers are allowed to reach agreements with Web properties for faster connection times. The main difference between Net neutrality and open Internet is the new prior...