Fire-Wired Blog

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com There is nothing simple about technology. While all you need to write the most basic of websites is five or six lines of code, try programming something as complicated as a multimedia website like YouTube or a layered smartphone application like Facebook and you’re getting into millions of lines of code (potentially billions). But beyond design, programming, and delivering digital media content, there is also the extremely complicated business side of technology. So many websites, social networks, applications, and software packages are nothing more than ideas. There is no secret recipe that is impossible to crack. So to protect hardware and software manufacturers from intellectual property theft there’s patents, a federal government designation that legally plant a creator's flag on an idea, innovation, and invention. But following a recent Supreme Court decision that entire system is in trouble. It may not seem like the s...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com The future is gonna be great. Computers are gonna be the size of coins, they’ll be able to process videos and games quicker than you can read this run-on sentence, and screens will be floating holograms in the air… At least that’s what I’m told. See every spring the world’s tech giants hold their annual developer conferences and use their moment in the limelight to proselytize their version of the tech future. This spring the most bombastic version of the tech future came from Facebook, who in so many words said the end of the smartphone is nigh. Dubbed “Facebook F8,” the annual developer conference is the routine moment for Mark Zuckerberg to throw out his pie in the sky ideas. In 2015 is was connectivity and messaging. In 2016 Zuck waxed poetic on the imminent omnipresence of artificial intelligent mobile assistants (think next-gen versions of Google Now, Amazon Echo, or Siri). As for 2017, well apparently we’re a stone's th...

When I got my first, personal GoPro one of the first videos I shot with it was a drive through Northern California's Avenue of the Giants. Now I've been cutting together personal travel videos for a long time now, but when I sat down to edit the Giants drive down... I just couldn't do it. Driving through the redwoods was just too cool to condense. So on our 20mbps home internet connection I decided to upload all 38 minutes of the 1080i drive. As the upload slowly progressed Marieta asked "Who's gonna watch 35 minutes of us driving?" Well as of this post the answer is more than 10,000 people. Click to watch the video YouTube. While Marieta is still baffled about the success of this video, I get it. If you want to experience a place you're hoping to visit or relive a personal favorite; a polished cut-down video doesn't do it. Videos like this uncut drive offer unfiltered access. So following this experience I've looked for similar opportu...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com You may not have realized this but for the last month (and every month going forward) your web browsing history has been packaged and sold. In two disgustingly fast weeks in late March both houses of the United States Congress and President Donald Trump sold you out. Both Iowa senators and all three republican representatives voted to repeal a late term President Obama signed FCC regulation that required internet service providers to ask subscribers permission before selling their web usage and browsing history. So take a moment to think of every little thing you’ve done online in the last month and know your ISP not only knows about it, but that information to a third party. Why would our elected representatives want to sell your web history on the sly? Well the official party line is holding ISPs to an unfair standard kills innovation and hurts job growth. The subcontext involves internet service giants’ campaign contribu...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com Unless your business is flush beyond compare, chances are you do not employ an in-house digital services manager. It’s highly likely you do not even employ a single IT person. So why are you messing with custom website design, company owned webspace, and managing disparate IT properties such as security, storage, e-commerce, and all the rest? One of the best signs of leadership is understanding what you don’t know and partnering or employing those who do. By cobbling together a patchwork of IT products and services that is what leads to your online presence being hijacked. For hackers, it is shocking the amount of time and effort it takes to scrape a poorly secured site, assume its identity, or simply break in and realign a sites content and security configurations. Conversely, for the individuals and businesses who administer these amateurly developed sites these actions can be devastating. Should your small business's’ site ...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com In a world that is becoming increasingly more paperless, some people still must toil in reams of paper and vats of toner. Who are these people? Small business owners and their employees. All jokes aside; if you’re a lawyer, car dealer, healthcare provider, or anyone that handles contracts and receipts there is no escaping the necessity of paper. While the technology of making paper hasn’t evolved to drastically in the last 50 years, the method for printing on it certainly has. Printers are the real headache of paper-strapped small businesses. Beyond handling a constant onslaught of printing jobs, the requirements a printer must have to get purchase cover cost,  connectivity, reliability, speed, scanning, faxing, copying, ease of use, and a modicum of intuitive troubleshooting when it inevitably fails or jams. See in an office where your IT person is basically whomever used a device last, every device needs to work on-d...

10 years ago I learned about an awesome challenge called the " Script Frenzy ." The idea was for writers to take the month of April and write a 100-page screenplay or other creative project. While I thought the challenge event was an incredible idea I never actually participated before the  official project was sent out to pasture after the 2012 event... But then March 30, 2017 rolled around and I discovered the perfect story to frenzy onto the page and today I have a 101-page script. No this is not my first screenplay. But it is the first one I've gotten to the point of typing "The End" and still felt the absolute NEED to produce. I won't bore you with details of the screenplay other than it's an adventure-drama-romance set in Iowa's Loess Hills and loosely "based on actual events." As I've recounted on here   many times before I love cinema and a long term goal of mine has been to write-direct a feature film. Am I delude...