Fire-Wired Blog

For Tiny Explosions ' 6th bout in the Des Moines 48 Hour Film Project  we lucked into the opportunity to make either a "Road Movie" or Sci-Fi short. We decided to kind of do both, and the result was a film worthy of screening, titled  Snap Back . Required Elements for this year's film included: Character : Freddy or Fiona Brown, poet Prop : Rubber Band Dialogue : "You heard what she said" While we did screen at Best of City this year, we didn't win any awards. A head-scratcher because why would our film screen again if it didn't receive any specific acclaim? Maybe we Being There'd ourselves . In the long run awards (outside of the overall winner or runner-up) are no big deal as you don't know how the judges graded and the recipients are almost always puzzling. As an example a couple of Tiny Explosions' past award wins have been confusing. The important thing is we're all exceptionally proud of the film and I don'...

This article was first published by  iowabusinessjournals.com Owning a small business owner means never being off the clock. It might 3pm on a Saturday and you’re drifting peacefully in a boat across a lake and one comment from a fellow weekender flips you from relaxed weekend mode into business mode. Of course this is only one example, these little episodes can happen at a family dinner, a dental appointment, in a dark movie theater, or any one of a billion scenarios. In all these scenarios you are innately equipped with your person business acumen; however if the situation gets serious you will probably find yourself without specific documents that may be required to seal a deal. This is where cloud computing is vital. If you aren’t backing up and securing your important documents online (i.e. “the cloud”) than you are cutting your business off at the knees. Paper is still a vital part of contract work and long term secure storage, but having remote access to contracts, legal...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com Sports gambling is illegal in almost every state, and even the states where it is legal it is highly regulated. For many sports gambling is seen as a predatory evil that preys on the weak willed and hurts society as a whole; others view betting on sports as a way to heighten the stakes of entertainment or possibly even make a living from a specialized knowledge set. For those with no stake in the argument, it can be seen as an odd discussion. Why is gambling on sports legal and yet the stock market exists? You might not have looked at it this way before but the stock market is basically legalized sports gambling. Traders pick a team they like, feel they have some insight into their fortunes, and place a bet on whether that team will succeed or falter. The capitalist viewpoint is you trading stocks isn’t gambling because buying stock is making an active investment in a business (i.e. “Team”) thereby supporting their cause. That...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com Don't give your customers a reason to say no. As time passes more and more reasons have become immediate dealbreakers. The very first was a sanitary storefront, a few generations later it was air conditioning, then public bathrooms, and slowly but surely “cash only” signs became public advertisements for “we don't want your business.” Now there are plenty of other criteria that will cut off prospective customers, but in the era of constant connectivity free WiFi is becoming a new age requirement. The security warnings of public WiFi have been broadcaster loud and frequent but the masses don't care. If you are a public facing business then you must consider offering either password protected or completely free WiFi to your customers. For roughly the last decade coffee houses have been feeling this pinch. Instead of reading the paper and drinking a cup of joe, coffee patrons now sip and stare at their phones. Even with...

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...