Fire-Wired Blog

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com The Super Bowl is hands down the biggest television event in the country. For six years straight, the National Football League’s season-capping game has broken the record for largest television viewing audience. While the Super Bowl is the ratings champion, it seems sitcoms, award shows, live broadcasts and other sporting events are forever trapped in the race for second place. The obvious tech equivalent to the Super Bowl is Facebook. In the world of social networking, Facebook rules. Try as they might, Twitter, Pinterest, Google Plus, LinkedIn and startup Ello are locked in an eternal struggle for second place. Google Plus technically has more users, Pinterest refers more traffic to online businesses, and Ello has that new car smell, but Facebook is king. Facebook has 1.35 billion active monthly users, 4.5 billion user “likes” daily, 300 million daily photo uploads, the largest population of 25-34 users anywhere online (the ...

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 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 When you run down the reasons for being on different social networks, so many are clear as day; Facebook connects you with friends and family, Twitter gives us insight into public discourse, and Pinterest illuminates the creative works of the world. For these and a handful of others, the utility of their site is obvious. However, for every thriving network, there are half a dozen useless sites. Topping the list of trivial online communities is LinkedIn Before you get indignant, I freely admit that I — like 300 million others — have a profile that I occasionally update on LinkedIn. At first blush, the utility of the site makes sense: a network for job seekers and business professionals allowing them to network (in the way your dad and college career counselor champion). Thousands of companies use the site to promote their brand and allow job seekers to follow their career opportunities. The problem is, outside of providing a ...

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 Some of you are sharing far too much information online. I’m not talking about pictures of your post-workout abs or nauseating details of your child’s bowel movements. No, this over-sharing is most likely a complete oversight on your behalf. Chances are, on a routine basis you are sharing your exact GPS location, contact list, screengrabs of your smartphone and much more. How is this happening? Through the permissions and settings you agree to while downloading smartphone applications. The easiest way to test your online exposure is with Twitter. One feature many Twitter-users overlook is the tweet location setting, and, unless you’ve investigated the default GPS tweet setting, you’re sharing your exact location with the world. To test if you’re tweeting your whereabouts, visit your personal Twitter profile, click on one of your tweets and, if you see the word “from” below your tweet, then you’re found. Examples like this ar...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com For tech geeks everywhere, doomsday came last week. On Jan.14, a federal appeals court struck down government regulations commonly referred to as “net neutrality,” the laws that forced Internet service providers (ISPs) to treat all Web traffic the same. Whether you were reading a blog post, sending an email or streaming a movie, net neutrality meant ISPs had to load all sites at the same rate and not some content over others. Confused? Net neutrality is like that, but at the heart of the discussion know that this means money. Think of it in terms of tiered TV subscriptions. Cable providers such as Mediacom or DIRECTV can host certain channels and not others based on the fee to carry them, beyond that, they can charge customers more for premium channels such as HBO or Showtime. With net neutrality potentially dead, ISPs can tier Internet sites and content in much the same way. Imagine Internet service where email and news sit...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com One constant with every holiday season is the TV “Christmas special,” and this year NBC’s “Sound of Music Live” was easily the biggest. While most viewers enjoyed the broadcast with simply a cup of eggnog and a roaring fire, a good deal of the audience “hate watched” it. These nefarious TV viewers shared the experience with millions of others by partaking in the social virus known as live-tweeting. Twitter is hands-down my favorite social network. The ability to immediately exchange information with others outside your social network is extremely powerful. One byproduct of this immediacy is live-tweeting, where one or several Twitter users post a series of tweets detailing a live event. In its short history, live-tweeting has been used for a handful of truly historic and informative events (i.e. the 2012 election, the death of Osama Bin Laden, etc.), but more recently, many have hijacked it for what could be considered evil. ...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com Fewer web actions are more vapid and vain than that of the “selfie.” What makes it worse is the Oxford English Dictionary legitimizing the nuisance by awarding it “Word of the Year” status. For Cityview’s less narcissistic readers, a selfies a self-portrait taken at arm’s length with a cell phone. While the act itself is not inherently evil, the self-aggrandizing overuse of the selfie becomes extremely annoying when appropriated and shared online by unabashed teenagers and less mature adults, clogging various social network feeds with girls’ duck lips and guys’ shirtless bathroom mirror reflections. Still the Dictionary had its reasons giving the term the crown. According to Oxford, the term selfie exploded in use during the last year, with a 17,000 percent rise in online appearances — a figure so daunting, Dictionary representatives said the decision was unanimous. Apparently it’s hard to turn down a trend so popular eve...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com There are two sacred cows in smartphone-user experience: battery life and constant connection to information. One of the best features of smartphones is the ability to notify users of new content through a background tool known as push notifications. For years popular services such as email, text messages and social networks have used push notifications to alert users of updates with little uproar, but a new trend in application development is pitting these two sacred cows against each other. Since Foursquare wove user geographic location into the social media universe back in 2009, developers have been frothing at the mouth to capitalize on user location. Global positioning system (GPS) technology has been a standard feature on all smartphones since the original iPhone. At a moment’s notice, users can find directions, traffic information and local businesses, but too much GPS use drains the phone’s battery extremely fast. U...

This article was first published by dmcityview.com Every so often I catch myself getting a little too “inside baseball” when it comes to talking tech. Understanding how to use an application or website is not innate, and if one service reminds us of this over and over it’s Twitter. Even though Twitter has been around for seven years, and more than 200 million users are on the service, still nearly all users have the same reaction when preparing to write their first tweet: “How do I use this thing?” My employers, best friends, parents and wife have been mystified by the social network, and if I’m being honest, so was I at first. What is a tweet? Who sees it? How do people respond to it? First, the basics: Twitter is a micro-blogging service where users publish 140-character-length posts called “tweets” in a public or private manner for followers and the general public to read. Once users sign up, they create a username, start following people and organizations and communicate with...

This article was first published by dmcityview.com Over the last 30 years, the music industry has been hit with repeated body blows: music videos, cassette and CD dubbing, revenue-crippling peer-to-peer mp3 sharing. Long gone are the days of albums going platinum on the day of their release, replaced instead with viral Internet hits and the emerging technology known as streaming music services. A couple of weeks ago, Twitter unveiled #Music, a new music discovery web-service and standalone application. #Music allows users to listen to popular music, discover emerging bands that are being tweeted about, find suggested artists based on who a user follows and tweets about and #NowPlaying pulls music from tweets in a user’s timeline. While #Music is currently getting all the headlines, streaming music is definitely not new. Streaming services such as Pandora, Spotify, Rdio and others have been around for years. The advantage Twitter holds over its predecessors is its public communica...

This article was first published by dmcityview.com How many social networks can one person use? Facebook? Of course. Twitter? Sure. Pinterest? Sounds fun. Google Plus? Maybe. Pheed? What now?               For those not following the trends in social networking, it appears tweens and celebrities are refashioning where it’s cool to share every second of your life. Now, only 4 months old, the social website and app Pheed.com has rocketed to the top of Apple’s Free Apps chart last week and, by all accounts, now has millions of users posting status updates, photos, music, videos and more. What sets Pheed apart from its social predecessors is the ability for users to profit from their content.               For years the business concern about social startups was, how will they make money? MySpace sunk itself by cluttering its site with too many advertisements. Facebook is just now starting to publicly report profit...

Today I decided there was no way around it, I had to advertise my distaste for Facebook, on Facebook. I've mentioned in the past my feelings about the king of social networks, but after getting a slew of non-family friend requests I did decided the best way to keep from hurting peoples feelings was to lay it all on the line. Facebook is a HUGE "time suck." Before I laid 300 friends to waste last fall I was just as bad as your average tween, checking my phone every couple hours for what's happening in the socialsphere. I guess it's good for brands, organizations, businesses and what not, but it's not for me. This company wants all your private information and they want to flip it for a buck. I don't want my face showing up in the sidebar ads, I don't care about edgerank, beacon, socially crafted advertising, sketchy t.o.s. and I don't want to give you something without getting something in return -not unless I can interact with you in the rea...

Last night I filmed an ISU student event at the Iowa State Fairgrounds, "Universities for a Better Iowa." The short and sweet is students from all three major Iowa universities have banded together with the Governor's office and the State Board of Regents to lobby legislators to either increase higher ed spending, stop state funding cuts and/or slow funding cuts. Obviously the preferred action would be the increased funding. There were roughly 300 people attending, mostly made up of students, and over half of them were University of Northern Iowa students. If you know anything about what's been going on at UNI you know they've been dealing with cuts in hard fashion recently . Considering my employer and as a product of a public university - Go Cylones! - I am absolutely on board with their mission. The problem is they are going about it in a very old fashion way; Public events, state tour, lobbying at the state capitol building... These are all smart i...

Vacation. There are very few better words in the english language. One of those words higher on the pantheon of awesome is "free." Who doesn't like vacations? Who doesn't like free things? Well how about -brace yourselves- free things on vacation . Oh man, talk about Christmas in May. Well over Memorial day my wife and I were lucky enough to go on a TWO WEEK VACATION up and down the California coast. It was awesome. Saw some family, hit LA, Laguna Beach, San Luis Obispo, San Francisco, Berkeley, Wine Country, and many more. Now unless you're going to a trade show you probably wouldn't put tech and vacation in the same thought, and my vacation would have been no different except for a pleasant little surprise I stumbled upon in the Russian River Valley portion of Wine Country; Foursquare Specials. Incase you aren't familiar with the platform, Foursquare is a location based review and reward network that uses your phone application. Kind of like a mix ...