Fire-Wired Blog

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com Nearly every industry has offers a good that comes with a stigma. Setting aside pornography, if buy a $100,000 sports car and you’re compensating for something, go to the theater alone and you’re a sad, lonely guy, smoke cigarettes and you’re a selfish, uneducated fool. This list could go on for the length of this column. Still if you were to rank all stigma the lowest of the low, for maybe the last twenty years, is meeting someone through the internet. Since it's inception, finding a date through the internet has meant you’re desperate to find someone. But then something happened, Generation X and the Baby Boomers have slowly been replaced by Millennials as the main audience for pop culture and with it a new set of social norms, and not only is internet dating acceptable it is now one of the more trendy things you can do. How’d this happen? A little hook-up application called Tinder. To be fair to cutting edge philanderers an

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com Like it or not, social has turned the business-to-consumer transaction into a relationship. The world seemed so simple before Twitter ushered in the era of real-time, public complaints. A customer had an issue they called a company directly and aired their grievance. Now with a twiddle of thumbs the whole world hears about your businesses failures and communications managers are forced to live in a nearly 24/7 crisis management mode. This is the new normal and it is not going anywhere. Still there are two options here: let your company be a victim of the real-time digital world or engage. Twitter is the contemporary water cooler, but instead of conversations being held in the break room gossip is being spilled in public. If your company is not actively managing your reputation in this public arena you are in serious trouble. Whether you’re commercial, industrial, business-to-business, private or public sector someone is discussing

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com One of the most volatile debates in the world of technology is of ethics. What set of norms do technologists use as a guide to build morality when it comes to software, hardware, content, and oversight? The clearest debates over ethical technology rage in the world of science fiction? Should we create autonomous super robots that have the ability to make decisions about humanity? Should we force consumers to vehicles and devices that protect our environment for future generations? Are countries that are more scientifically and technologically required to protect and enhance developing societies? Of course these are all grand scheme debates about that civilization as a whole will face. There are plenty of immediate ethical conundrums developers and consumers wrestle with every day, and a perfect example is the use of ad blocking technology. 25 years ago, consumers had close to zero options when came to evading advertisements. Un

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com Tech has a unique way of sharing a glimpse of the future years before a device, software, or service ever comes to the market. Even fictional accounts of days to come present ideas that somehow miraculously develop into non-fiction innovations. Star Trek alone had the precognition to foresee tablets, on-call limitless entertainment, mobile translators, and needleless syringes a.k.a. Hypospray. As exciting as these flashes of tomorrow can be, the truly great ones are those that go by with little notice. The most recent example of the future passing us without a stir is the NFL’s plans to stream live games on Twitter. The National Football League is the biggest entertainment entity in the country. From August to February hundreds of millions of football fans tune in to broadcasts of the league’s gladiatorial action. It doesn’t matter if it’s the best or worst teams competing, or if the game is available for free on broadcast or behi

This article was first published by  iowabusinessjournals.com Reaching a customer is harder than ever these days. While media and product messaging is coming at consumers from every imaginable outlet, techniques have been developed to ignore and sidestep nearly all of it. To stand out you need to make your product launch and immediate use an event. If your advertising dollars end up being blocked, fast-forwarded through, or disregarded than your new goal should be making consumers anticipate your new services or merchandise as event release. In today’s 140 characters and forgotten climate, nothing is more attention grabbing and builds more lasting consumer enthusiasm than a live-streamed event. Getting a consumer to buy-in and feel a sense community with a company is no easy task. You can establish loyalty programs, provide exclusive messaging and add-ons, and build an account system where an employee manages the most important clients, but at the end of the day, you never really t

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com When a new computing platform emerges it seems the our initial reaction is that of a four year-old on Christmas morning. At the age of four kids have reached the cognitive capability to anticipate the importance of Christmas morning, but not really the ability discern between a truly stellar gift and underwhelming that’s been nicely wrapped. While not all new tech platforms underwhelm, the misses all seem to hit with a fervid marketing scheme followed by a tepid consumer response. Right now no sector of the tech consumer space is seeing the tide turn quicker than that of wearables. Apple, Sony, FitBit, Google, Garmin, and hundreds more wearable manufacturers REALLY want you slap a tiny computer on your wrist or face. These little gadgets allow you to monitor your heartbeat, send and receive short messages, get directions, receive app notifications and other features that apparently aren’t convenient enough on our smartphones. O