Fire-Wired Blog

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com Every generation there is something that puzzles the preceding generations. Working backwards; gay marriage, Twitter, blogs, computers, hip-hop, videogames, punk rock, et cetera. Now while this list only spans recent history, I’m willing to bet the trend extends all the way back to the discovery of fire and the creation of the wheel. The fact is change can be scary and almost always confusing. The most recent trend to ding both factors is internet fame, commonly referred to as “YouTubers.” In the early 2000s, blogs were all the rage. With high speed internet and limitless online space to chronicle our world, anyone could publish their thoughts, reports, and insights into whatever interested them. Some of these blogs lead to book deals, TV shows, movies, and mega website networks, however most lead to nothing more than inane drivel. By the mid 2000s the internet became over-saturated with blogs and are no longer the rage they o...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com The internet is not immune to embarrassing trends. Whether we're talking America Online chat rooms or keeping a Friendster profile well past 2004, there are dozens of shifts in online communication that in hindsight were just silly. Today, we don't need hindsight to understand that the ridiculous web-enabled discourse of the day is emojis. If you text, tweet, or email with someone under the age of 35, chances are you've received some rather confusing messages lately. Not typos or inexplicable abbreviations, (although those are odd as well) but little graphical icons. Battleships, the moon, eggplants, top hats, and many more absurd little cartoons have all been invading our online communications. These silly little ideograms, better known as emoji, are currently the hippest form of communication. Taken from the japanese symbols 絵文字 (which is read e-moji) and translates to pictogram, emoji are almost as old as the inte...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com The airline industry is one of the most treacherous. Dozens of airlines have gone under, declared bankruptcy, and few of them run what can be admirable operations. Case and point, on July 1 the United States Justice Department announced it was investigating the four largest domestic airlines for pricing collusion. Not only do they bleed us dry over baggage fees, meal fees, and hidden processing charges, they might have been working in secret to keep rates high. The airlines are arguing the ticket fee game is fiercely competitive and similar pricing is a symptom, but to the average consumer the smoke is continually rising fees and the fire is dropping oil prices. While the justice department sorts out the legality of airline ticketing practices, technology is doing it's best to empower the consumer. When raging against the machine the smartest move is not to go screaming at your enemy, but to undercut it using it's own sys...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com When exactly does good enough become too good? Most of us have the memory of coming home from a night trick or treating on Halloween and gorging yourself on sugary treasures. At first it's delicious eventually it becomes sickening. Just as hard as it is to stop devouring unlimited chocolate peanut butter cups until it's too late, it’s just as easy to over do our technology usage and consumption. But abundance isn’t the only cause of sinking into a tech whirlpool, there’s also ease of use, and exhibit A of this issue is high dynamic range image capture. If everyone got exactly what they wanted all the time, we’d all be millionaires and yet no shops would be open. The same is the case with high dynamic range, or HDR, image capture. HDR makes nearly every pixel of an image brilliant with color through close to zero effort. To successfully create an HDR picture a photographer must capture 3 or more of the exact same image in s...