Fire-Wired Blog

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com A common intro to economics question asks “Would you be okay with free phone service if in exchange your calls were interrupted with frequent commercial breaks?” At first the student immediately is drawn to answer yes, because the word free is so attractive, but after a moment the thought creeps if the service is truly free if you’re subject to advertisements. Our lives are inundated with ads; television ratings weight shows for proper ad rates, newspapers and magazines would cost a fortune if they didn’t run them, and millions of websites subsist on them. Now one of the biggest online advertising delivery platforms is offering users the inverse of that economics riddle; Would you be willing to pay for YouTube if it meant no longer seeing advertisements? Even though that question pushes the respondent to forgo “free,” heavy YouTube viewers do not care. YouTube is the number one streaming media website. There are billions of vi...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com In life, few things are as passively satisfying as “blocking” out the little annoyances. Telemarketers calling during dinner, well gripe for a second, then simply say “please put me on the do not call list.” Have a embarrassing family member on Facebook that you can’t unfriend? Well bypass that social media trainwreck by blocking them from your newsfeed. It seems just as society-wide rage reaches a fever pitch with an irritant, someone releases a tool to circumvent it. Today the most prominent digital irritant bombarding our lives is without question mobile advertisements, and almost like clockwork Apple has swooped in to save the day, allowing ad-blocking applications to be developed for its iOS mobile operating system. Take a minute to consider how many advertisements you encounter on just one site. There are banner ads, little videos that autoplay (sometimes with sound, i.e. “the internet plague”), assorted tiny ad icons an...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com Connoisseurs of late 1990s television might remember a certain VH1 roundtable discussion show “The List,” which basically laid the blueprint for modern internet content. The concept of the show was simple enough: a host and four celebrity guests discuss and rank the quality of people, places, and things based on personal enjoyment and bias. Sound familiar? Well it should, because it seems one-third of the internet has succumbed to the eye-ball magnet of rankings. No matter if you’re looking for the best restaurants in your area, most reliable car manufacturer, quality of a film coming out in theaters, or most affectionately consumed gummy bear, the internet is ready and willing to deliver a composite score of the public’s opinion. The most popular of ranking sites is easily Yelp. Based on a five star scale, Yelp gives visitors the low-down on any business or service on which one might be looking for customers reviews. Hitting ...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com There’s something exclusive about being part of a group. Feeling part of a movement or private society is why people join churches, gyms, go to specific schools, buy specific brands, and join cults. Of course there are additional benefits to each of those examples, but at their core they are exclusive with some more walled off than others. The savviest of the list are the groups withhold access benefits until you pay dues or fees. It feels dirty, but these clubs wouldn’t exist if people didn’t want what was on the other side of the pay wall. Over the last five years the online retail world has overwhelmingly embraced barrier fee, or as they prefer to call it “Retail Club.” I guess it feels warm and cuddly to feel you’re part of a club and not simply a cold business transaction, but these retail clubs are running rampant across the online marketplace. Amazon Prime is the biggest, NewEgg’s Premier is a popular alternative, Jet.c...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com Dear President Obama, With the Iowa Caucus nearing, and political drama starting to consume the news cycle, I'm sure you've heard the rumblings for a federal holiday on election day. Considering only half of eligible voters cast a ballot in 2012, think how big the voting pool would grow if people didn't have to work. Not being a political activist I have zero idea if this has any chance of happening, but it seems to make sense when you take into account people who work multiple jobs, extended hours, or overnight shifts. However this letter isn't about the election, it's about tech. I’d like to propose a different holiday. Mr. Obama, please consider a federal holiday for Apple’s annual new iPhone announcement. Now before you toss this letter in the recycling and cast it off as trivial consider that more people own iPhones in America than vote in the Presidential election. Approximately 130 million voters pulle...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com Virtually every medium of media has its zealots. The most well known group is audiophiles; music or sound lovers pursuing the cleanest audio sound possible. These fanatics will espouse the virtues of five-figure sound systems that deliver frequencies the human ear can’t hear but are nevertheless important because of the subconcious way your brain reacts to said tones. I don’t mean to disparage audiophiles, or any other media zealot for that matter, but to simply identify the protagonist in a digital age crusade against the most alarming of foes; compression. As long as the ability to record sight and sound have been available, compression has existed. Whether we’re talking the phonograph, daguerreotype, or kinetoscope all forms of media started with compressed quality. Simply put, compression is any manner of compacting information as to reduce file size in effort to allow for easy delivery; i.e. degrading sound and image qual...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com The National Football League –America’s most popular sport– loves to tout its $10 billion revenue value. Between dominant TV ratings and local teams stoking the flames of fandom the NFL has nearly a perpetual motion of cash creation. $10 billion is impressive, but interestingly enough it’s puny in comparison to the king of American entertainment, videogame playing. Companies like Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony, EA, Rovio, and Sega politely smile and let out a chuckle when they click by a football game on TV, because while millions of raving football lunatics are generating $10 billion for the NFL, billions of videogame playing zombies are shoveling $21 billion in U.S. revenue and nearly $100 billion worldwide. When you really start to think about how football obsessed our culture is, it’s preposterous to think that button mashing gamers in basements across the nation are fueling the economy more than football loving meatheads cramm...