Fire-Wired Blog

This article was first published by  iowabusinessjournals.com Every once in awhile you find yourself in tough spot of needing immediate alterations to commissioned work but are not able to meet in person. If you find yourself in this sticky situation right at a deadline sometimes the only solution is to walk through each edit step-by-step. 10 years ago this would have been one of the most painful phone calls of your professional life, but today due to screen sharing technology it is but a minor inconvenience. Free screen sharing software has been around for over a decade. Baked into every Macintosh computer is the easy to use and cost-free Messages, formerly iChat, and on the PC side Microsoft owns and gives away the most popular personal video conferencing tool in Skype. Both Messages and Skype offer the same basic tool of full screen sharing along with it's video conferencing and texting platform, but if you’re looking for more collaborative features you’re using the wrong se...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com Headphones have come a long way. From decades of soup on the endless of a metal headband to tiny, wireless hearing aide like ear inserts the innovations continue to shrink and astound. Everyone has their preference and while audiophiles may tell you there's only a few  headphones truly worthy of listening to music through, audio quality is not always the point. While they've been around for nearly as long as recorded sound has existed, it wasn't until the last decade or so that headphone style erupted into consumer war. The first truly mass marketed as “cool” headphones were the expensive and style Beats by Dre. Founded in 2006 by hip hop legend Dr Dre and music industry mogul Jimmy Iovine, Beats by Dre became so stylish that less than a month later and acquisition by Apple made them both multi-billionaires… Problem Beats headsets are primarily about style. A quick Google search about Beats by Dre audio quality and bui...

This article was first published by  iowabusinessjournals.com Getting honest feedback from loyal customers and employees is practically gold. While your knowledge and ambition may drive your business, thoughtful, outside perspective can be the fuel that makes sure your doors are open for the long haul. But what is the best tool to reach your invested followers? Right away we can discount direct mail. Unless it's a package, bill or birthday card almost no one cares about the mail. So don't waste your money on postage. If we also discard all passive and intrusive survey methods such asin-person point-of-sale surveys, comment cards, and polling phone calls what eventually are left with is online surveying. Amazon product reviews, Yelp, TripAdvisor- these are all wildly popular because they are a public social platform to vent frustrations and for consumers to act as food critics. Still all too often these platforms are not constructive for improving a business. Direct onli...