Fire-Wired Blog

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 If there is one term in the tech world that is off-putting, exciting and confusing all wrapped in one, it’s cloud computing. While there is definitely a high degree of nerdery when talking about “the cloud,” chances are you are already using several cloud services. YouTube, Wikipedia, WordPress, Dropbox, TurboTax, Gmail — all of these websites, and the service they represent, are examples of cloud computing. So what is it? Cloud computing is the use of Web-based computing tools that replace the need for hardware and software traditionally stored on a computer. Any time you store a picture online, create an event on your web-synced calendar or web search for the definition of a word, you are computing in the cloud. Why is this such a big deal? Think back to how you used a computer in 2000 and compare it to today. A little more than a decade ago, you probably stored every picture, document and mp3 on your computer. It was ...