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...