Welcome to Tech Talk for Families. We are the only dedicated technology, video game, and toy website and show with a specific family focus. Our goal is to provide information parents and families can use to make wise purchasing decisions, get gift ideas, and learn more about the impact of technology on the family. You can listen to our popular free award-winning audio program with the kids and not have to worry about anything remotely inappropriate for their ears, nor will you find anything inappropriate on our site. Subscribe and enjoy!

NOTE: You don't need an iPod to listen to our show. You can listen here or read the tutorial if you'd like to get new episodes when they release.

Staff

Dale & Teresa Langkin , Senior Editors, Cofounders, and Podcast Cohosts

Dale has been using computers since 1982 and still smiles when he remembers giving his 5th grade computer teacher pointers on how to do animation on an Apple II. Since then, he has developed operating system interfaces and been on software development teams, both productivity and games. He has over a decade of public speaking experience and has been playing video games since the Magnavox Odyssey. He has also been heard on the audio version of Blogger and Podcaster Magazine, has appeared on The Tech Podcast Round Table, and serves as an occasional panelist on The Daddy Panel. Teresa, a childcare professional, has a degree in elementary education and music education and and takes a practical approach to technology, always considering how it would best suit families. She also consumes parenting literature on a regular basis and has done so for longer than she's had children and has served for almost a decade moderating and operating internet discussion communities. Together, they have been parents for over 13 years and are former licensed foster parents. Both share a lifelong love of all things electronic and digital, especially when they benefit the family.

Kimberly Langkin

A high school student, Kimberly enjoys science fiction, fantasy, writing, and the many uses for an iPod. An avid reader, she especially enjoys video games based on books and movies and seeing how they compare to their source material. She is also an accomplished musician and enjoys and excels in music games and gadgets.

Dani Langkin

Dani, in late elementary school, enjoys writing and creative arts and often offers a fresh perspective on any given situation. She's happiest when designing something new and enjoys open-ended games that allow for a lot of self-expression or deal in relationships.

Hannah Langkin

As an early elementary school student, Hannah gets frustrated with her DS, because most of the games require a level of interface control that becomes an obstacle to her enjoyment of the games, so she tends to prefer using her Leapster, Didj, or other systems designed for younger hands. She also loves podcasting, so you'll catch her on our audio show occasionally, offering her unique perspective during reviews or filling in when Teresa's unavailable.

Contributing Writers

Kevin Cummings

Kevin Cummings is a husband, father, writer, podcaster, and educational administrator -- not necessarily in that order. He's been a committed computer geek from his high school days when he worked a summer job to purchase an Ohio Scientific Challenger 1 computer. In the 90's he developed a shareware program called TutorDOS which was used on six of the seven continents and taught thousands of people the basics of Bill Gate's infuriating Disk Operating System. His video game systems have included the original Atari console, a Mattel Intellivision, and nearly every Nintendo console ever built. To fill his days, he works as an education administrator at a small technical college in Northern Utah. His weekly humor podcast Short Cummings Audio draws in literally tens of listeners and is the basis of his book My Favorite Shortcomings.

Dennis Gray

 

Ringmaster Greg

Ringmaster Greg (rmgreg) spent the first half of his life as a professional student concluding that career with a Ph.D. in Medical Research, which means he is a World Authority on very little. Unfortunately Greg’s degree is not in electronics, in fact he knows just enough to be dangerous in that field. He does not speak technobabble and the last computer language he was familiar with was Fortran 77, as in 1977. As far as he is concerned, C++ is an Algebraic Statement, Pearl is a precious gem, Wine is something you have with dinner, and Ruby (on Rails) is the sister train to the Orient Express. Greg’s most recent, proud accomplishment was figuring out how to use Automator on his Macintosh PowerBook G4 to sort and file the medical journals he needs for work. "W00t!" and High Fives all around. Greg loves his Mac. Unfortunately, when Greg was around 12 years old, he overheard his father tell a friend, “He who dies with the most toys wins,” which Greg understood to be life’s fundamental challenge and since that day has sought to own every new, cool, state-of-the-art, electronic gadget available, much to the chagrin of his wife, Tonya. Finally and most importantly, Greg is the proud father two very active and tech savvy boys, Nikolai (8 years) and Caleb (5 years) and he does his best to help them keep up with the Electronic Joneses. A Sony PSP, Sony PS3, Nintendo DS Lite, Nintendo Wii, and LeapFrog Leapster, along a menagerie of Macintosh Computers helps Greg to keep his finger on the pulse of the Electronic World. In his limited spare time, Greg is an assistant professor at a university in the Chicago, IL area and records a Family Friendly Podcast with his family called Dancing With Elephants.

Tonya DeWithe

Forget keeping up with the Joneses, Tonya struggles at times to keep up with her family. Juggling the day job and the household duties she shares with her husband Ringmaster Greg in raising their sons, 7-year-old Nikolai and 4-year old Caleb, she brings the perspective of the busy modern mom who happens to be a lifelong casual gamer and beginner of things that she doesn’t have time to finish. Now that her boys are getting old enough to enjoy the digital world, she finds that she has a great excuse to get reacquainted with the gaming world and marvel at the advances that have occurred while she wasn’t paying attention.

Tonya’s love of tech was heavily influenced by her technophile father who was more excited than the kids when he brought home Pong, the Atari 2600 and 5200, a Bally Astrocade system, and a TRS-80, all of which were heavily used in her youth. She strengthened her geek roots through constant use of her college Mac lab, eventually becoming the Macaholic people know today. Tonya’s gaming tastes tend toward puzzle and adventure games, strategy games, and classic arcade games, although she has been known to dabble in other genres...usually for hours on end. When she can be torn away from the obsession-of-the-week, Tonya is also part of the Dancing With Elephants podcast with her family.

Redboy

Husband, father, podcaster, photographer, gadget guru and all around geek dad. Those are just a few terms that describe the boy from the cornfields of central Illinois. Playing with new games and gadgets has been a passion his entire life, and now as a dad he gets to share that experience with his kids and convert them to the geek lifestyle.

Professionally, Redboy is in Public Affairs specializing in online news, social media, podcasting and web technologies.

P.D. Love

Aside from being a husband, father, podcaster and GM of a software development firm by day, P.D. also has a little time to enjoy gaming with the kids. Having started in his own childhood with the Atari 2600, then the 5200 and then on to computer gaming, P.D. had to abandon all game play for several years to fight the spiral toward addiction. With the release of the Wii, a couple of growing boys and several years of counseling behind him, it was time to get back into the gaming ring. Although his perspective may not always include a wide variety of gaming experience, you will get information that is straight from the heart and unswayed by the gaming conglomerates (at least those who don't support Tech Talk for Families). To find out more about P.D., check out his podcast websites: TheDaddyCast.com and LoveHouseRadio.com.

Chuck Tomasi

Chuck Tomasi is a Father, IT Manager, Podcaster, and Author. His tech roots sound like something out of War Games, going back to the early 80's when a friend from school showed him how to use a phone, an acoustic coupled modem, and a paper terminal to tie in to the local university's mainframe to play games. That was the beginning of Chuck's life long enthusiasm for technology.

Over the next 30 years, Chuck has dealt with a lot of cool stuff like playing various electronic games, developing and running a dial up BBS, growing his skills and interest in digital photography, not to mention all the neat stuff he gets to work with in his day job as an IT Manager - networking gear, servers, databases, and tons of different software.

Chuck was also an early adopter of the podcast craze back in late 2004. From the moment he heard his first show done by an average guy out of his house, he knew he had to do it. Chuck immediately set to work on his first show. Eventually, he would have as many as five productions going at once including the popular Gmail Podcast, a short show with tips how to better use Google's email program, and the Parsec Award finalist Technorama, a show that takes a light hearted look at tech, science, sci-fi, and all things geek. Over the years, Chuck has tirelessly worked on every aspect of his podcasting craft and stretching in new directions to include graphic design, voice over work, interviewing, audio engineering, promotion, and writing. In 2008, Podcasting for Dummies 2nd Edition (Wiley Publishing) was released with Chuck's name on the cover. What's next? Chuck doesn't know. What he's certain of is that he wants to keep learning and be prepared to jump on the next thing and master it.

You can find out more about Chuck at chucktomasi.com

Zach Ricks

Zach Ricks was born and raised in Idaho on a potato farm. When he wasn't farming or risking his life on a variety of motor vehicles, he was probably reading, playing piano/guitar, or video games. He's lived in Idaho, Utah, Oregon, the Philippines, and now resides deep in the heart of Texas. He and his wife of 11 years (12 in January) have one daughter.

When he releases an episode, he podcasts at Geek Survival Guide (a finalist for both the Parsec Awards and Podcast Peer Awards), and GutCheckCast. A lawyer by training, Zach works as an Assistant Project Manager for an e-Discovery firm in Austin, TX.

John Wilkerson

John Wilkerson is a husband, homeschooling father of 7 children and host of the Jesus Geek podcast.

John has been using computers since the days of the Commodore VIC-20. Since then he's owned dozens of computers many of which have been scratch-built. John has had a passion for technology since grade school.

John is currently employed by one of the top technology universities in the United States as an Information Technologist (jack of all trades, master of none).

Mur Lafferty

Mur Lafferty is an American podcaster and writer based in Durham, North Carolina. She attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and graduated with a degree in English. She was, until July, 2007, the host and co-editor of Pseudopod. She is also the host and creator of the podcasts Geek Fu Action Grip (on hiatus) and I Should Be Writing. (Source: Wikipedia) See her personal website for more information.

The Howling Wolves

Jim is a husband first, then a father to 2 young boys, host of a family podcast (The Howling Wolves), producer of our local church sermon podcast, Software Engineer for an avionics company in Iowa. My first fascination for gadgets came at a very young age. While in grade school, my friend and I would make trips to the local Radio Shack and pick up switches, LEDs, potentiometer and experimental boxes to build imaginary gadgets. My first computer was an Apple IIe which was purchased by my parents around 1985. The second system I stumbled upon was the Commodore Amiga 2000 and I spent many hours playing with the graphics. My next machine was a mini laptop, a no-name brand running windows 3.1. This machine I used at Iowa State where I got my degree in software computer engineering in 1992. My next purchase was a Gateway 2000 and with many student loans outstanding I had to get a loan to buy this computer. After many years of using this machine, we upgraded to the Dell. From this point on we were purchasing Dell about every three years. My last purchase was a MacBook Pro. I have always been fascinated with gadgets, I own plenty, which has earned me the nickname "gadget man" by my family and co-workers.

Steve & Maureen Loopipe

 

Full Disclosure

Tech Talk for Families reviews products from various companies, providing a unique family-focused look. Like most press outlets, we receive most of these products as free samples or on loan for review purposes. We maintain journalistic integrity, however, and will not bias our reviews to please the manufacturer or public relations firm from whom we received the review sample. We also will not accept sponsorships from companies whose products we review in order to avoid any appearance of bias or impropriety.