Dennis Kennedy is an award-winning leader in applying the Internet and technology to law practice. A published...
Tom Mighell has been at the front lines of technology development since joining Cowles & Thompson, P.C....
Published: | February 23, 2018 |
Podcast: | Kennedy-Mighell Report |
Finding news that is accurate and easy to access is a challenge in the era of “fake news,” but there are still ways to find the news you want on a daily basis. In this episode of the Kennedy-Mighell Report, hosts Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell discuss the best and worst ways to consume the news. They cover mediums like newspapers, newsletters, apps, and the functionality of algorithms meant to provide you with relevant stories. This month on parting shots, Tom talks about travel apps and Dennis shares about Scribd.
Have a technology question for Dennis and Tom? Call their Tech Question Hotline at 720-441-6820 for the answers to your most burning tech questions.
Special thanks to our sponsors, ServeNow and TextExpander.
The Kennedy-Mighell Report
Navigating the News
02/23/2018
[Music]
Intro: Web 2.0, Innovation, Trend, Collaboration, Software, Metadata… Got the world turning as fast as it can, here how technology can help, legally speaking with two of the top legal technology experts, authors and lawyers, Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell. Welcome to the Kennedy-Mighell Report here on the Legal Talk Network.
[Music]
Dennis Kennedy: And welcome to Episode #208 of the Kennedy-Mighell Report. I am Dennis Kennedy in St. Louis.
Tom Mighell: And I am Tom Mighell in Dallas. Before we get started, we would like to thank our sponsors.
Dennis Kennedy: First, thank you to TextExpander for sponsoring our show. Communicate Smarter with TextExpander. Gather, Perfect, and Share Your Knowledge. Recall your best words instantly and repeatedly. Learn more at HYPERLINK “http://www.textexpander.com/podcast”textexpander.com/podcast.
Tom Mighell: And we would also like to thank ServeNow, a nationwide network of trusted, prescreened process servers. Work with the most professional process servers who have experience with high volume serves, embrace technology and understand litigation process. Visit HYPERLINK “http://www.serve-now.com/”serve-now.com to learn more.
Dennis Kennedy: In our last episode we talked about Personal Knowledge Management, and in an exclusive story announced that the second edition of our book on Collaboration Tools is scheduled to be available in March.
Tom, it’s great to have signed off on the page proofs, isn’t it?
Tom Mighell: It is.
Dennis Kennedy: In this episode we want to take on the subject of news, in a world of algorithms, fake news, paywalls and millions of news resources, how do you find and get the news that you want on a daily basis, and tune out the news, and I’m using air quotes here, that “you don’t want to get.”
Tom, what’s all on our agenda for this episode?
Tom Mighell: Well, Dennis, in this edition of the Kennedy-Mighell Report we will indeed be — actually revisiting a topic we talked about in the past and discussing the idea of The Daily Me, and the best ways today to consume the news.
In our second segment we have an audience question or actually a co-host question that we are looking forward to answering, and as usual, we will finish up with our parting shots that one-tip website or observation that you can start to use the second that this podcast is over.
But, first up, what is the deal with consuming news these days? Never mind that nowadays we have to be vigilant about the quality of the news that we read, there is just so much of it and it’s everywhere and every app has it, and there are so many sources, there are so many different ways to consume the news. And I feel like keeping up with the news is harder now than it ever has been. I guess is that what’s bugging you about the news, Dennis, these days, or is it something else?
Dennis Kennedy: I think just keeping up is one thing but kind of gathering and consuming the news that you want in one place, one easy place is for me the real difficulty, and I was thinking about this last Sunday morning when I was thinking that I know these people who kind of sit down with the Sunday paper and it’s a whole ritual, and I was thinking about that and saying, oh, it would be nice to do that I guess as I was looking through the trends on Twitter to get an idea of what the latest news was.
And I just felt that the newspaper thing is really unsatisfactory, because whenever I look at a newspaper I feel like I am reading today what was on social media and in blogs and RSS on the day before. So, it was just that notion of going what is the — sort of like a one place so I can go to, it would be like the experience of reading all the news that’s fit to print as they say in one place.
And so that — that was it. So, the problem like I said with newspaper and newspaper sites is that they seem like they — they date really quickly, you have old news and I don’t know, but you, Tom, like all the newspaper sites to me are just like ad traps. It’s like, you click here, you just scroll down on your laptop, you are setting off some video or going into some ad, and it’s like just a trap for the unwary and next thing you know you’re up against a paywall. So, it was just frustrating, I was like, is there a better way to do this?
Tom Mighell: Well, I will say that almost all the ways that you describe are things that are really not acceptable to me these days, because for a whole bunch of different reasons. There’s something about reading the morning newspaper and when I think about that, I actually think about reading not necessarily my local news, the Dallas Morning News is not the worst paper in the world, but it’s not also something that I would say has the stories that I would always want to consume.
(00:04:56)
I want to keep up with the local news and I will talk about that a little more later, but I don’t have the patience anymore to read a physical newspaper. I don’t know if that’s a function of our digital lifestyle now, but I would rather stroll through and get through headlines and then focus on the things that I want to read more about, and dig into those stories, and you really can’t do that with a paper anymore.
And to be quite honest I don’t spend a lot of time on either websites for major news outlets and what I prefer and what I think we are going to talk about a lot during this session is, part of the episode, the segment is, I prefer to consume the news primarily in an app, it needs to be an app that just gives me the stories and that I don’t have ads and that I can scroll through quickly, and that sounds a lot like Twitter, it sounds like a little bit like Facebook. For me, it’s neither of those things, I really don’t use either of them for news so much.
We will talk about Twitter in a little bit. I just used that a little bit for news, but I don’t use The New York Times app itself. I don’t use The New York Times website or the Washington Post or The Wall Street Journal or any newspaper frankly to do that, and I prefer to have some tool where I can just get to the stories and I want them to be stories that are relevant to me that I can quickly get through and then consume what I want.
Is that too much to ask for? I think I’ve got a decent mix of things but I’m always open for new suggestions.
Dennis Kennedy: Yeah, I think my mix is terrible at the moment so I was thinking about local news which is sort of what we thought when newspapers went through their worst period was going to be where they potentially had, the advantage to do something new and interesting, and that would be local news.
But, it seems like newspapers have gotten to a sort of all these wire service articles and stuff like that, and so, the notion of local news is difficult. I was watching — the other night I was watching the local news because there was going to be an ice storm and I just want to get the details and it was just like t’s after t’s after t’s, it will tell you what the weather is going to be like in 15 minutes after this and then just to look at local news, there just wasn’t much of it, in fact, the big story what they spent a couple minutes on was, 07:32 St. Louis, Tom, but it was a story of a woman in Texas who woke up one morning speaking with a foreign accent.
Tom Mighell: That was an amazing story by the way.
Dennis Kennedy: And they spent two minutes on that and I am just like, well, look, surely there must have been something happening in St. Louis but — and it’s interesting that someone who wasn’t have at least some connection with this show business background suddenly woke up with speaking in foreign accent, and I am it’s possible or it could be totally true. But it was a weird thing to see on the local news.
Tom Mighell: Yeah, I think that local news is really the hardest — the hardest piece to solve and it’s because every metropolitan area has so many different news sources of probably varying qualities and varying styles and types of production of the news. One — I’m hoping, promising new app that’s being tested right now, one of the apps that I use occasionally to look at the news is just Google News.
I am going to talk in just a minute about how I use Google to bring these stories that are relevant to me and I think it does a — actually a fantastic job on that on my phone, but in general, I think Google News does a pretty good job of at least as good a job at some of the news aggregators that I have seen and getting me the news, but the Google News app also has a local component to it.
It’s okay, it’s fair, but they have just started to pilot an app called Bulletin in both the Nashville and Oakland markets that I’m really looking forward to because it’s designed to have hyper-local news so that you should be able to download this app and tune in specifically to your area and get news on your area that’s there.
Now, I guess the one thing is, is that, I feel like we’re heading towards silos of news where you got to go one app for this and one app for that, another app, so there’s really right now not a good place where we can get everything in one, all of the news we want in one app or one location, but I think it’s a start, I’m intrigued and I’m hoping for good things from Google’s Bulletin app.
Dennis Kennedy: I actually like that idea, so it seems to me there is a couple of things that I want. So, I want something that’s on-demand, so I have grown to like the crawl across the bottom of the screens on ESPN and on news, even though that also feels like it’s not on-demand because I have to wait for it to go round and if I —
(00:10:09)
Tom Mighell: And sometimes it’s not even news, but that’s beside the point.
Dennis Kennedy: Right, and then also I think you want to tailor and customize the news that we want and that’s where I think that we haven’t seen as much progress as maybe we like. And I would just like to have the concept of like a dial or something where I can say, I hear the things I want, let me tune those things in and tune out some of the other things.
And so, those are kind of the key things for me, so the personalization, the on-demand and then some ability to tune because I think this whole notion of the old style of make you sit through commercials, to run you through ad things, due to the paywalls and stuff like that, it’s just frustrating when all you want to do is get a little bit of information.
Tom Mighell: Well, and so that raises what I use on my Android phone, for Android users and it may just be Pixel users. I can’t remember if it’s just unique to Pixel users or not but the Google app actually has become very smart with the news that you want, and it’s a little bit like how you describe, it starts you out with a page and it says, choose the topics that are of interest to you.
And you can say things like, I am interested in politics or you can say I am interested in the Republican politics or Democrat politics or libertarian politics. You can say I am interested in dramas or you can say I’m interested in Scandal or Grey’s Anatomy or How to Get Away with Murder, those Thursday shows. You can be as granular as you want or as broad as you want, you can tell them what sports teams you are interested in, you tell them all the different things you like and it starts to give you every day, all I do is swipe — swipe from my home screens, swipe to the left and I have a news feed, all the stories that I’ve requested and that I’ve asked for, occasionally, something will pop in there that has nothing to do with what I want, but there’s a little menu bar at the top that says, Please don’t show stories either on this topic or from this source or any of that. You can filter that out and Google will learn from you.
And so, frankly, that’s one of my best sources for news. It tends to be a little more tech-heavy than news-heavy but I find that it’s a great way and I like the fact that it’s learning. I mean, I think you are going to talk — this may be the time to talk about the algorithm. I think that there are ways that the algorithm could be better and smarter, but I think that it is the future in terms of how it’s going to deliver us the news.
Dennis Kennedy: Yeah, I mean, when — I wonder about the algorithms. They have a great potential of course, but it’s a slow process. So when I checked the news site and at the top of the recommended news for me was, and I quote here, “Waitress stiffed a tip on a $735 takeout order then fired after she complained on Facebook.”
Again, some people might find that interesting, to me, I don’t know what the algorithm was thinking there.
Tom Mighell: I want to know what your search 13:30 were that got you that story.
Dennis Kennedy: So, I think there is this tailoring thing and I think that algorithms overtime will help us with that in the tuning. There’s also I think this random thing and trending thing that is very important and that has always been the criticism of The Daily Me.
I would love to tune this to only the stuff that interests me and only read the stuff I agree with and that’s probably not a good thing in the grand scheme of things. So, I think more-and-more people go to Twitter and Twitter trending for like the really just now happening things, and I think that was probably the case.
Today — when there’s another school shooting today and I think that probably people learned what was going on or learned about it on Twitter. So, I think there is that notion with social media, Twitter, you get that sort of instant news and then you might get something that’s a little more detail and maybe like a little bit analysis in a short period of time on a blog and possibly in podcasts.
Tom Mighell: Let’s say, I don’t pay — I actually don’t do that much review of Twitter trending but I think you are right. I think that because Twitter has the ability to be so immediate in its delivery of the news, either by journalists or just by regular people, I think that actually that has the potential to be the place to go for breaking information.
(00:15:05)
Now, I actually tend to use, lately I’ve been using Twitter to actually create lists of the things that I want to see and I have been actually using it more these days to follow technology tweets and I’ve created a curated list of a couple of hundred technology journalists and websites, and that’s what I visit every day, and that’s exactly the stuff I want to see.
Not every tweet is something I want to see, but at least it’s on the same — the topic that I want where if I just followed and looked through my regular feed with all the people I follow, I’m going to get a lot of noise and a lot of junk in there, and so this is one good way I think to get to that information.
Dennis Kennedy: Yeah, I think it’s that volume that can be the problem, the firehose information, you just go like, well, I see this enough places, I guess it’s significant.
So, I think that also though involves going out and doing some looking, so Tom, I think in the past week on Twitter, you were talking about RSS in a positive way and the thing that we always loved about RSS feeds is that news just came to you and then you picked the stuff, and you subscribed to it, and you got alerts and those sorts of things.
So, I think that’s another notion of news is a way that I can pull that and then I think that gets to where you are going, and Tom, I pull what I want into one place so I don’t have to look all over to these different places. At least sort of have different ideas on this, to me, it’s sort of like a dashboard notion and that dashboard could be an app, it could be something else.
I go back to the old My Yahoo!, where you just like pull the — it was just pulling headlines in from these different places, you go like, oh yeah, I like the stuff from The Washington Post, I like the stuff from the San Jose Mercury and give me like the three top headlines and I will arrange it on to page and I just go to one place and I scan that, and boom, it has up to date and there are links and I can drill down as I needed.
And I can change those depending on what my interests were at the time, so if we are going to travel, and then obviously you want to know the weather where you are going and things like that. So I like that — I recall it generally the dashboard notion, but I think that that’s where I go.
So, My Yahoo! I have used for a long time, but I don’t know whether you had used My Yahoo! in the past or you had an opinion of that type of approach?
Tom Mighell: I always, always, always love the idea of the dashboard. I love to be able to pull up my computer in the morning and there would be a dashboard of the latest news that I could quickly scan. That has changed and the reason why I think the dashboard is sort of a relic of the past is because we’re all mobile now, and most of these dashboards have no ability to transform to your tablet or to your phone. And so, I think that whatever we used to consume in the news, we need to be able — like you said, it’s got to be on-demand, and on-demand is sometimes when we are sitting and waiting somewhere outside or when we are traveling or wherever, and I think the dashboard doesn’t really fit that because I think the ones that you’ve listed in here, when we’re probably putting the show-notes, they are old sites and they still use old technology.
But, frankly, even our friends who do the Recommedo newsletter, they recommended a sort of a dashboard approach, and I think it was called, I don’t know how to pronounce it, it’s Hvper, I don’t know if that is Hvper, but it’s a ‘v’ instead of a — I’m not sure how to pronounce it, but it calls itself the One Page Internet. And it is headlines from all the major news sites on the Internet. It’s a great — great — very comprehensive site. I don’t have the time or the patience to go through that and I think that — I still agree with you, I think RSS really is the way to truly tailor and customize the news that you get.
What I’m finding out about it is that it relies on you too much. It’s both a good and a bad thing that’s relying on you to do the tailoring because I found that my RSS feeds have blown up so big that I don’t have time to read everything, because I’m not able to manage the number that I’m getting, I feel like I need to look at everything that I’m getting and it’s all important, and it really tends to take up a whole lot of my time.
So, I have struggled now to do RSS and I’ve had to be honest, it’s not my favorite way of consuming news these days.
(00:20:01)
Dennis Kennedy: Yeah, so I think that’s the attractive notion when you say, oh, wouldn’t it be great if like on a Sunday morning I sat down with this newspaper and it’s a cup of coffee and I had a couple of carefree hours, where I could kind of go through these things and — that would be great.
And I don’t know whether that’s a relic of the past, but it’s sort of — it’s such a variance to what I think a lot of people find of may be thousands of tweets, blog posts through an RSS reader, of Facebook posts, other things that you kind of scroll through. And you would like to say, well, that’s just a lot of stuff and that if I’m just looking at what I find in one newspaper, that’s a pretty limited slice of the world.
And so, we are trying figure out some kind of trade-off there and there is that notion, I guess, Tom, we always talk about curation, well, you love to find the perfect curator for you, whether that’s automatic or human who does it. There are some things out there, right?
A friend of ours told me about an app called Accompany, which does some summarizing of the people you are going to meet and news items and things like that, that can be helpful, almost like a little briefing app.
And so that sort of approach is interesting to me, like well, wouldn’t it be great if I had my little daily briefing of the news updates, so it would take me five minutes or 10 minutes to read every morning, that’d be great? I tried that with Alexa a little bit. Alexa news is another approach where you go like, well, if I like audio, maybe I can just go to something like that and have the news read to me, excerpts from different news sources played for me in the morning. So, there are a number of things out there. I just don’t know how satisfying they really are.
Tom Mighell: Well, I have to say, I really like the daily briefing that both the Echo does and Google Home does, and you can — it’s got a whole bunch of different sources that you can pull from and it can read you the headlines in sports, in business, in all kinds of stuff.
I think that’s valuable if you want to consume news by listening to it. I know that you listed in our notes, the e-mail newsletters. I understand that newsletters are making a comeback and that they are more popular. I still can’t — I still can’t really get into the whole newsletter phenomenon, I appreciate it, but I know you’re kind of one of those who’s kind of interested in newsletters; even though, you can continue to say that e-mail is dead. But, yeah, you’re interested in the newsletter aspect.
But, there’s a bunch of different ways that don’t require RSS, that don’t require apps that can come to you by e-mail or by audio and a bunch of different ways to consume the news other than that.
My two — and here are two other things that I really love to use to consume the news. One of them — and I think I have mentioned it before on this podcast and it’s an app that a lot of people use is Flipboard. I used it at first when Flipboard came out, I then stopped using it, and now I use it actually a lot more now because they’ve changed it. They’ve added the dreaded algorithm and they are trying to make it smart for you, but it really is smart, it’s something that I think I’m getting news, it really is stuff that I’m interested in, and it’s in different pages, it’s a well-designed app. I really like it a lot.
I will say though that the app that I open every single day to read from is Nuzzel. Nuzzel is an app that connects to your Facebook account, it connects to your Twitter account, it connects to your LinkedIn account, and it displays stories that your friends talk about. So, it’s relying on your friends to curate the news for you.
So, when I open it every day, the news that I’m seeing is the news that is important to the people that I follow on one of those social media sites, and I tend to find that the quality of those stories is better or at least more relevant or more interesting to me than I would find otherwise. So, it’s another way to do it. I think it’s a really interesting model that they have and it works personally for me.
Dennis Kennedy: Yeah, I mean, I think that points out that there is this really personal aspect of it, and so, from the user interface, because as you mentioned, if you go back to the Internet start page notion, the My Yahoo! notion, typically those were three columns and all these headlines and to imagine, reading that on a phone, is just really, really difficult.
Tom Mighell: Oh yeah, exactly.
(00:25:02)
Dennis Kennedy: Nuzzel, I understand the potential of it. This has been a consistent disappointment to me and so it’s just sort of like 25:11 own on some of these things. So, I think it’s a really interesting area and I always would like to learn from our listeners, what it is that they use, what they’ve found that helps them address this problem? Because I think that I do it by going to using a bunch of different resources but it seems incredibly inefficient. So, it’d be great to get suggestions from our listeners on that one, Tom.
Tom Mighell: Yeah – no, I think — I think and let’s may be find a way to wrap this segment up by maybe saying what do our listeners use? I’m always on the lookout for new ways to consume the news. In fact, just tonight, before getting ready for this podcast, I found a new RSS reader. I have been still trying to find one that has everything that I want and I am always up for looking at new ways. So, you know how to get in touch with us? So we are going to talk about it more. How to get in touch with us, we’ve got a hotline that you can let us know, but I think if you could contribute your thoughts may be, we can bring some of those ideas on to a B segment in the future and talk about this a little bit more.
So, before we move on to our next segment, let’s take a quick break for a message from our sponsors.
[Music]
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Tom Mighell: And now, let’s get back to the Kennedy-Mighell Report. I am Tom Mighell.
Dennis Kennedy: And I am Dennis Kennedy. Well, Tom, you are one of the co-Chairs of ABA TECHSHOW this year, and I don’t know whether we will have another episode come out before TECHSHOW. I suspect that we will on our current calendar, but I thought we might take the B segment, and let you fill the listeners in on what’s happening with TECHSHOW 2018 and what you’re excited about.
Tom Mighell: Yeah – no, very excited about TECHSHOW this year, and you’re right, I am the co-Chair this year with Debbie Foster. We are both past Chairs of TECHSHOW, so whatever possessed the two of us to come back and Chair the conference again is probably a topic for another day, in a place that serves adult beverages, but we are both having a great time, working with the planning board to get it ready. They’ve done a lot of hard work. Couple of the things that are interesting this year is we are at a new venue. We’ve been in the Chicago Hilton for 10 years. In fact, when I was Chair 10 years ago that was our first year in the Chicago Hilton.
We are moving to the Hyatt this year. I think it’s amazing what a property can do for a conference. You wouldn’t necessarily think about that but the fact that the educational rooms are so close to the vendor floor that you can kind of go right back and forth without a lot of walking, is great.
The vendor floor in past venues felt like a dungeon and our vendors weren’t real happy with it. This vendor floor is very open area and it’s all one space and it feels really nice. It’s going to be a good venue, I think for this type of technology conference.
What I think makes — as usual, we’re bringing all kinds of great technology content and educational content for lawyers and we’ve got the very practical our core production tools. We’ve got sessions on litigation and eDiscovery, we’re — obviously, we want to try and keep ahead of the trends and so we are talking about AI, we are talking about Blockchain, and those types of things.
(00:30:02)
But we are also doing our very best to get lawyers talking about the things that they are actually doing right now in their practice, how to market your practice using technology? How to improve processes in your firm?
One of the new areas that we are adding this year is a track that we are calling Beyond the Tech, which actually doesn’t really have a lot to do with tech, we are talking about leadership, we are talking about how to disconnect from technology, how to take a break from work, things that are more law practice management-related, but they’re not so much technology.
So, we think it’s going to be — I think a fun year, we are going to have some different things, we’ve got a lot of new people coming this year, lot of new speakers, lot of new attendees so far, it looks like it’s a good group of new folks that are coming in, and we are really looking forward to the show this year. Dennis?
Dennis Kennedy: So, I assume that your — the TECHSHOW is continuing its tradition of new and diverse speakers?
Tom Mighell: Oh absolutely. No, I mean our goal is always to bring in at least one-third new speakers each year and this year I believe we have close to 40% new speakers. Over 50% of the speakers are female. We have a fairly good diverse crowd otherwise, and I think probably somewhere in the range of 60% to 65% of our speakers are lawyers.
We have always thought that this was a conference by lawyers for lawyers, that’s changed somewhat over the years. We’ve found that there are folks who can come in, and who are not lawyers and they get tremendous ratings and they’re very good at speaking and getting points across, but we’re also proud to say we’ve actually got lawyers coming in here who can walk the talk and talk about the technologies that they use in their practice. So, I think we are really pleased with the mix of folks that we’ve got for this year, so we think it’s a good mix all the way around.
Dennis Kennedy: So, for somebody who’s on the fence now about TECHSHOW, what should push them over to coming? I am sure there’s still room for people to sign up, right?
Tom Mighell: Oh, absolutely. We’ve got — the more the merrier. I mean I think that if you’ve never been to TECHSHOW before, coming to TECHSHOW once is sort of — I think it’s a no-brainer. If you are listening to this podcast then you ought to be coming to TECHSHOW, at least to see what the big deal is. You may not come every year, I know some lawyers who say that they learned so much in one year that they need a year or two before they can come back and learn more. That’s not an uncommon response that I hear, but it’s not just about the education, it’s about getting together.
I know Dennis and I were talking before and both of us — we find it difficult to actually get to the educational sessions, because we are spending time talking to people and networking and you’re going to find people at TECHSHOW who have the same, who are addressing the same technology issues that you’re addressing, that you’re dealing within your own practice, and we have lots and lots of opportunities for you to meet with people, to talk to them, to go out to dinner and socialize with them. And it’s just a great overall experience that you’ve got to at least try once and I think if you try it once you’re hooked and you are coming back year after year.
So, I say if you’re still on the fence this year, give it a try this year, come and find me and say, hello, tell me what you like or what you don’t like about the show, and even if you’ve already registered, I still want to see a TECHSHOW, so come up and let me know that you have been listening to the podcast, and tell me what you are thinking about the show.
Dennis Kennedy: And it is actually a great way for people to meet the two of us in-person because we are really accessible. I think that — I think it was last year, we had that one of our listeners had the funny comment that we sounded exactly like we sound like on the podcast which was —
Tom Mighell: Amazing, amazing kind of work, yeah.
Dennis Kennedy: And it’s amazing how that does work. But now it’s time for our parting shots, that one-tip website or observation you can use the second this podcast ends. Tom, take it away.
Tom Mighell: So, I have lately gotten into the habit of giving tips that I have to either walk back or be careful about what I give them, and this may turn out to be one of those tips, but I’m really intrigued about a service like this, and it’s called service, at HYPERLINK “http://www.getservice.com” getservice.com and the notion is that it’s a service that can — that continually monitors both your airfare and your hotel reservations, if they notice that there’s a better price for your hotel room it will actually automatically rebook it and send you the difference in the fare.
It reminds me a little bit of TripIt. I use TripIt a lot to manage my itinerary, to keep my travel itinerary together.
(00:35:00)
And one of the things that this service requires is that you give it access to your Gmail account so it can monitor for when you make reservations and it’s reading those e-mails to keep track of them.
If that type of privacy is an issue then getservice is probably not the service for you, but I’m giving it a try. It’s $50 a year or 30% of whatever they recover for you. And I have gone for a yearly subscription. I’ve decided I am going to try for a year, see what happens, see if I can save money, see if they can book me on better rooms or if I have problems with my airlines and they can get either vouchers or miles in exchange for that.
So, I am interested in that too, because I think that we are headed this way with a lot of travel services, is that they are monitoring things and trying to go out there and make travel a more satisfying experience. So I am interested in how that works out, I will come back later to give you report on how it worked out.
Dennis Kennedy: So, from my tip I am revisiting something I’ve mentioned before. I’m always — I have been experimenting with a number of e-book, audio-book services, and so one I tried is Scribd, and it was — it’s one of these things that sort of bills itself, people bill it as Netflix for books, and you got — for 899 a month you got three — you got credits for three e-books and one audio-book.
And I really liked it because of great selection, really current stuff, and then in the past week or so they moved away from the credits model to — so as I understand it you can now get unlimited books with your subscription. Still some of the details that I am a little bit fuzzy on, but I was quickly downloading books that I wanted, and it seemed like there wasn’t a limit on that.
So, if you are looking for way to get e-books, audio-books on a regular basis without going out and buying each one, then this — especially on some of the hard to find e-books, it’s been a really good service for me and this new change in the business model or the pricing model is really interesting.
Tom Mighell: And so that wraps it up for this edition of the Kennedy-Mighell Report. Thanks for joining us on the podcast.
You can find show-notes for this episode at HYPERLINK “http://www.tkmreport.com/” tkmreport.com. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or on the Legal Talk Network site, where you can find archives of all of our previous podcasts.
If you like to get in touch with us, you can find us on LinkedIn, you can find us on Twitter, and we have got that voicemail for questions for our B segment. We really like it when you send us questions. We like to be able to feature them, and I think we are going to have one for the next podcast. It just came in, we are looking forward to that. That number is 720-441-6820.
So, until the next podcast, I’m Tom Mighell.
Dennis Kennedy: And I am Dennis Kennedy, and you have been listening to the Kennedy-Mighell Report, a podcast on legal technology with an Internet focus. If you like what you heard today, please rate us in Apple Podcast and we will see you next time for another episode of the Kennedy-Mighell Report on the Legal Talk Network.
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Outro: Thanks for listening to the Kennedy-Mighell Report. Check out Dennis and Tom’s book, ‘The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together’ from ABA Books or Amazon, and join us every other week for another edition of the Kennedy-Mighell Report, only on the Legal Talk Network.
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Kennedy-Mighell Report |
Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell talk the latest technology to improve services, client interactions, and workflow.