Tech Table Radio Show

Tech Table
Wednesday, December 18, 2013

December 18, 2013


Justin: Welcome to MPA’s Tech Table. I’m Justin.

Diana: And I’m Diana.

Justin: And we’re your hosts. We’ll be serving up a heaping spoonful of all things tech.

Diana: We promise it’ll be easy to digest.

Justin: Hey, Diana.

Diana: Hello, Justin.

Justin: It’s Wednesday.

Diana: Yes, it is Wednesday. It is Wednesday. Are you feeling…?

Justin: Web Wednesday.

Diana: Ah, yes.

Justin: I’m feeling webby.

Diana: You don’t have webbed hand do you?

Justin: No, I don’t. No, I don’t. Anyway, it is Web Wednesday so we’re going to talk about holiday fun and traveling.

Diana: Lots of us travel during the holidays, don’t we.

Justin: Absolutely, and so if you’re looking for something to do while you’re traveling, this is an interesting thing because a lot of times you’re in a city you don’t know. Let’s face it, you’ve been in one little house with 20 members of your family for two days and you want to get out of there.

Diana: And you love them all dearly.

Justin: But you want to get out of there. Yeah.

Diana: Need a little escape.

Justin: Absolutely. So there are some neat websites you can go to to look for places to go, I guess things to do, while you’re out and about. Urbanspoon.com, that’s a favorite. I know that website pretty well. Urbanspoon.com. It’s a crowdsourced website. What’s crowdsourced?

Diana: What that basically means is it depends on the people using the website, just consumers like you and me, to provide information to the website.

Justin: Sure. So it’s a user sourced sort of deal?

Diana: Yeah.

Justin: Okay. It lists restaurants and reviews by geographic region and critics, food bloggers, and just ordinary people contribute.

Diana: Ordinary people like you and me.

Justin: Absolutely. Yeah, so Urbanspoon. Urbanspoon is linked to a lot of things. It’s linked to Google I know, to if you look up a restaurant or [unclear 00:01:32].

Diana: A lot of partnerships there.

Justin: Yeah. All right, what’s the next one, Diana?

Diana: Scout.me. Yes, you heard that right. Scout like S-C-O-U-T dot me, that’s M-E. On scout.me you can find tons of things to do right near where you are. It works much better in urban and tourist destinations so if you’re in a small rural area it’s probably not going to work as well but if you’re in the largest city at that time you can look for things to do by categories like events, food, outdoors, sports. Maybe you want to go out for a night of bowling but you don’t know where to go. Just go to scout.me, click on family, and then bowling and you’ll see the local lanes.

Justin: That’s pretty cool.

Diana: Mm-hm.

Justin: Yeah, and then there’s jambase.com, which base is B-A-S-E, so jambase.com. If you’re looking for a concert you go to jambase.com and see who is playing in the neighborhood or in the area.

Diana: Are you looking right now?

Justin: I am looking right now. I’m looking right now. Clicky, clicky, clicky, yes. I see a look. Today’s shows shows Kenny Rodgers is playing at the Bridgeview Center Friday night.

Diana: Right. Right.

Justin: Yeah, and that’s located in our region. From jambase.com you can even click to go to your concert tickets and you can buy your tickets and see this legendary Kenny Rodgers.

Diana: That is awesome.

Justin: Yeah, it’s pretty neat. Woohoo I guess is what you’d say about that. I love concerts and I love going out. Kenny Rodgers and I, we cover the same song. I know he did Mary Did You Know and that’s on my new Christmas album too.

Diana: There you go.

Justin: So he’s kind of my competition. Yeah, I know, okay, whatever.

Diana: We’ll go with that.

Justin: All right. So then we have IMDB.com.

Diana: Internet movie data base.

Justin: Absolutely, and you can find basically if you want to just kind of see what movies you might be forgetting about you can search for movies by title, actor, director. If you like Cuba Gooding, Jr., find out what movies he’s in. There you go. You can see ratings from multiple sources and reviews from a lot of different critics so there’s a whole bunch of stuff to do if you’re stuck at grandma’s house with Aunt Cindy and Uncle George.

Diana: Pretty specific there.

Justin: I am. Until next time…

Diana: Take care.

Justin: Tech Table is brought to you by MPA of Bloomfield, Iowa, and God’s Country Radio. You can visit us online at askmpa.com.

Diana: If you have questions or comments, please send them to questions@askmpa.com. That’s questions@askmpa.com.

Justin: And thanks for listening.

Jodie Atkinson

Designer & Video Specialist - Jodie is a mom to a very active three-year-old, Abbie, who keeps her hopping. A recent transplant to Southeast Iowa, Jodie and her family are enjoying the relaxed pace of living in a rural community. She joined our team from the hurry and scurry of the Des Moines metro area, where she worked at Gannett/Des Moines Register creating dozens of ads every day. She obtained her bachelor’s degree from UNI in Graphic Design and loves creating design that matters. Jodie’s mantra: “Be great. Create.”

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