Fire-Wired Blog

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com Few things are as fulfilling as going on vacation. Leaving your cares, deadlines, awkward relationships, and everything else at home and travelling to a exciting or relaxing place. As perfect as getting away from it all can be, the gatekeeper to these experiences can be unbelievably frustrating. No, this gauntlet of grief has nothing to do with asking for the time off from work or setting your affairs in order so your time away doesn’t end with a surprise catastrophe at home. The real pain before pleasure comes in the form of booking your travel. You’d think living post-phone vacation booking would be an era of sweet relief; no more calling airline after airline, hotel after hotel, rental car company after rental car company. Thankfully we’ve traded that torture but for something that is an entirely different painful experience. There is no silver bullet in the digital age for booking travel accommodations. The first savior ...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com The mechanically captured still image has been around for over 150 years. In the mid 1840s, the Daguerreotype process was invented whereby a specially conditioned silver-plated copper would lock in an image when exposed to light and shadow. Silver and copper being two rather expensive metals you shouldn’t be surprised to learn the process died out quickly when film based photography started to develop. Jump to today and the pervasive nature of cameras has pushed the artform into what is unquestionably it’s platinum age. To be clear the golden age is considered the midnight 20th century when film cameras were still considered a luxury for everyone to own, and were mostly owned or operated by professionals and artists. I consider today to be the platinum age because the technology and the know-how are nearly neck-and-neck as far as progress goes. More than any feature or function digital cameras provide, the ability to take vi...

This article was first published by  iowabusinessjournals.com If you operate a small business in Iowa, chances are good your customers Iowans. However if you business has a public website or any online space your business administers, according to the European Union, you are part of the global marketplace thereby subject to EU laws. Setting aside any political outrage you have with this issue, know that your legal culpability is not too great. Of course for complete legal advice consult with a lawyer but the general concern should be; if European citizens are visiting your website how are you tracking them? Second, if you are tracking them how are you collecting and maintaining their data? Online privacy and personal information is among the hottest issues in tech today. In Europe is has surpassed “third rail” status and become the hangman's noose. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) basically says citizens have the right to digital anonymity unless they explicitly ...

Excited to share my latest multimedia endeavor, Audiography. A few feet beyond what I would define as a hobby, Audiography is a new nature sound recording effort mixed with personal storytelling. If that's enough for you, here's the soundcloud. As you may know I am a podcasting fanatic . I first started listening to podcasts in 2007 when I discovered Filmspotting , and in 2012 my good friend Jacob Rosdail and I set behind the mics ourselves to create our own podcast " Filmcast Without a Cause ." Well Audiography is something new. Part podcast, part storytelling, and a large dose of natural sounds. Roughly two weeks ago I drove up to Okoboji's Iowa Lakeside Lab to spend a day filming Alex Braidwood 's Acoustic Ecology course. For two weeks, Alex takes college students, artists, and creatively inclined individuals out into the world to record nature sounds and examine the world of acoustic ecology. At the end of the experience the crew produces a set o...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com Every tech-enabled marketplace celebrates a new, industry-darling each year. Whether it’s movies, social media, podcasting, transportation, applications, music, or any other silo of technologically enhanced goods creation, some unforeseen innovation captures all the industry eyes. But every once in a while, something rises above their intended producer/consumer ecosystem to grab headlines across society as a whole. These red-hot crossovers inspire superlatives such as “gamechanger” or “revolutionary.” Well just starting to boil over is a cartoonishly violent, freemium videogame ‘Fortnite.’ Videogame megahits are not new. There are decades of examples to site where men, women, and children were all captivated by pixelized, remote-controlled entertainment. Fortnite is the semi-annual superhit that is inching its way into zeitgeist-wide. As is generally the case with super power videogames, Fortnite is a massive multiplayer game ...

This article was first published by  iowabusinessjournals.com Travel is a silent budget killer. Nevermind hoarding receipts for meals on the road and hotel stays, the real iron maiden of expense is mileage. If you’re using a personal vehicle to travel near and far for your business you’re no doubt burning an ocean of gasoline, and even worse shortening the life expectancy of your ride through wear-and-tear. Now if you’re part of a larger corporation or franchised medium-sized business this may be reimbursed directly through your employer; however for small business owners mileage tracking and tax write-offs is an absolute must. Thankfully your smartphone offers dozens of options to track your mileage. Of course you could take diligent notes in whatever application you prefer to do such things (Google Drive, Notes, Keep, Evernote, etc.). But for piece of mind, and better records for confidant tax deduction, there are a few applications you should really consider. First, there ...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com 95% of the world has no idea how the internet works. Security breaches, data leaks, identity theft- these are life altering events that the internet has inflicted on millions of people (probably billions at this point). So why did every media outlet cover the recent Facebook-Cambridge Analytica story as if national security was at stake? The immediate, half answer is the sour state of American politics where everyone still trying to figure out the narrative for the past presidential election. If a foreign outfit nefariously uses US citizens “private data” to help swing an election, the harvester of that data should explain how that happened. But of course it's not that simple. “Private data” does not exist when it comes to the internet, and anyone who says otherwise is selling you something. Seriously, when you sign up for any “free” service online what you actually doing is turning yourself into a renewable commodity that i...