Fire-Wired Blog

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com In January, a 1991 Radio Shack print ad was circulating the Internet. It featured 15 different top-of-the-line consumer electronics for the time: a portable CD-player, a VHS camcorder, high-fidelity speakers, a desktop computer and many more. Combined, all of the items could be purchased for just more than $3,000 and maybe fit in the trunk of a car. Today, all 15 of those electronics are obsolete, replaced by any common smartphone, which, in some cases, are sold for one penny and fit comfortably in your back pocket. The industrial revolution has brought the world some amazing inventions — automobiles, airplanes, radio, television — but few, if any, have the explosive potential of the smartphone. Barely a decade since first being introduced, and already one out of every five people on the planet owns a smartphone. The computer for sale in Radio Shack’s 1991 advertisement featured a 20MB hard drive, early office suite softw...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com For gamers everywhere, Christmas has come early — the long-awaited next generation of gaming units has finally hit store shelves. Within 10 days of each other, both Sony’s Playstation 4 and Microsoft’s XBox One hit the market this past month and together opened up the console gaming world to a new echelon of button-mashing entertainment. While Playstation and XBox loyalists spend the coming weeks embroiled in heated arguments over whose platform is superior, let me save you from becoming collateral damage. Neither the Playstation 4 nor the XBox One is worthy of your time or money. There’s no denying the unbelievable player experience, realistic graphics, processing power, back catalogue of games or gamer mindshare that Sony and Microsoft have to work with. The trouble lies in the world these two platforms find themselves in — the mobile gaming and wireless world. The rising tide of mobile gaming is undeniable. More than on...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com Christmas may be three weeks in our rearview mirror, but for tech nerds the world over, January’s Consumer Electronics Show is the real reason for celebrating. For years this annual mega-conference has been the venue for companies to release the latest and greatest tech innovations. In recent years, CES saw the unveiling of 3D TVs, eye-controlled computers, futuristic concept cars and much more. This year, it seems, curved flexible glass smartphones are the most buzzed about gadget. As powerful as smartphones are, few treat these miniature computers with the respect they deserve. They’re tossed in purses, sat on while in back pockets, their screens are mashed up against keys and loose change, and most likely one in three of you reading this have suffered the arrhythmia-inducing cracked screen. Until now the only defense against our reckless behavior was hard plastic cases and thin screen covers. Flexible phones are the answer ...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com For all of its hip commercials and excellent word-of-mouth buzz, Apple’s iPhone is still second-best. Market analysis from this past quarter revealed four-fifths of the world’s smartphone users are Android users, Google’s mobile operating system. As dominant as 80 percent sounds, why does it feel like Google’s stronghold is an outright lie? Android’s quiet climb to the top of the smartphone world wasn’t about marketing or innovation but pure and simple undercutting the competition and providing the alternative. While the iPhone was undoubtedly the best smartphone for four or five years after its release, it was expensive at first and only available to AT&T customers. Since it first hit the market, Android has been available on practically every carrier, offered extremely similar functionality, and it practically reset the scale for what smartphones should cost. One of the major differences between Android phones and iPho...

This article was first published by dmcityview.com Just when it seems all smartphones are starting to feel the same, one developer has completely thrown the market for a loop. Two words: X-ray photography. Through a light-capturing advancement known as hyper light-refraction, the application “PERView” is able to amplify the ultra-violet light that bounces off cloth fibers, rendering them invisible to certain smartphone cameras. While this technology isn’t truly “X-ray vision” and doesn’t provide skeletal imagery, it does allow the user to see through the cloth materials of its photographed subjects. PERView’s developer, Timothy Saddman, unveiled the application last week explaining that his initial idea was to create a tool to help security agents check for weapons. It wasn’t until Saddman tested his innovation at a shopping mall that he discovered his “jaw-dropping” achievement. Privacy rights groups are labeling the application as “depravity of the crudest order” and “invasiv...