Download the podcast from iTunes, or play it below:

Loyal listeners of The Hopkinson Report know a few things about me:

- I never miss a week (once in the last 118 episodes)
- I love technology, being online and all things social media
- I love mountain biking (I compared the ‘flow’ of biking to a business in Episode 113)

So when I was away for the first part of my vacation while mountain biking some epic trails in Seattle, the capable Brandon Werner filled in. But then the unexpected struck when I came back to the east coast to go biking in the rocky trails of the Pocono mountains.

Photo: Happier, 2-armed times near Seattle just days before my crash

Do you believe in social media karma? No less than SEVENTY-FOUR different people wished me happy birthday on Thursday August 19th. It was great. Everyone was so happy, and people wished me the greatest day of the year!

Well, as fate would have it, my upper arm (distal humerus) would face a 3-foot high karma boulder head-on. And lose. Badly.

The next week turned into a whirlwind of hospitals, travel, surgery, second opinions, friends, family, pain, insurance red tape, and frustration before finally making it back to NYC.

My friends said that I would somehow find a way to link my broken arm to social media.

In truth? I went the opposite way.

What did NOT matter in that week, was twitter, foursquare, facebook, marketing, viral videos, podcasts, and blog posts.

What DID matter, was family, friends, coworkers, communication and old school doctors screwing a piece of metal into me to put me back together.

I will say this:
- Text updates were great for quick communication
- Facebook is a great way to post gross photos
- E-mail is a good way to tell a story once to many people (helpful with one arm)
- The iPad is a great way to kill 3 painful hours on a train

However, all this is nothing without a real world network.

So I ask you… How is YOUR real life network?

Is it healthy?

Or is it fractured?

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On this special edition of The Hopkinson Report, Jim is on vacation, so I, Brandon Werner (Intern 1.0 for long time The Hopkinson Report listeners) guest-hosts. I explain why Social Media is the new dividing factor between Generation Y and their Baby Boomer parents.

Download the podcast from iTunes, or play it below:

On Hopkinson Report Episode 102, Jim interviewed me on my research on my generation, the millennial AKA Generation Y. This group is also called the echo-boom, as they are the children of the famous Baby Boomers. Since recording that episode, I had a revelation that will be the topic of this episode.

When I was a child, I remember my parents (baby boomers/teens of the 60′s and 70′s) used to tell me stories of how their parents “just didn’t get it”. Their formative teenage years were filled with Woodstock, the anti-Vietnam movement, Nixon… These were the years of Rock ‘N Roll and there was a sharp divide between the baby boomers and their “Greatest Generation” parents.

Through my teenage years, I never really felt that level of misunderstanding between my parents and I. In fact, my parents “got-it” almost too well.  I wanted to learn drums and be in a band, my dad taught me how to do it from his own experiences, If I tried to dye my hair, my mom would show me how. The classic parent/son anti-piercing or tattoo fight? They actually encouraged them (so I didn’t really have any drive to get them). I would say I wanted to go to a Green Day concert, and my dad would ask to come with me.

From talking to my friends, this is pretty standard. Where was our rebellion or revolution?  Where was our Rock ‘N Roll? Recently, after a few failed attempts to communicate exactly what I do for a living, I think I found it. Our Rock ‘N Roll is Social Media.

As I mentioned, the big events of my parents’ formative years are immortalized as the hippie and rock movements, I look back on the last ten years and one movement sticks out plain to see, Web 2.0 and the rise of the social networks. While it is hard to imagine, Facebook has only been around for five years. In that time, it has amassed over 500 million users, half of which log in on any given day. More than half of everyone in their 20′s has a Facebook profile.

I am not exaggerating when I say it is hard to imagine life without Facebook, but it is just one site. Think about how much YouTube, for example has changed the way we watch entertainment. I believe we just witnessed a milestone in how advertising is done with the recent Old Spice man response videos. Who wasn’t talking about those? In a time where not so long ago, people were saying TIVO was going to destroy advertising, we are passing around commercials and watching them for enjoyment! These videos received 45 millions views in just 2.5 weeks, with Old Spice sales going up 107% since the campaign started. When I asked my dad what he thought, he replied “Old Spice? That was for old people…” Talk about brand transformation.

The eternal disagreement with my parents is, “why don’t you get off that computer”. They would rather me do anything other than sit at the computer, including sit and watch television. For the baby boomers, the first computer they ever learned to use was at work or maybe Atari. It is a single use tool, or even a toy. For us Millennials, we can not even remember a time before computers.  For me, sitting and just watching television is absurdly boring when I can be doing other things as well.

For me, my computer/iPad/iPhone are my television, office, bank, notebook, phone, book, canvas, post-office, etc. Try to think when was the last time you had a phone conversation for over a hour on a landline… When was the last time you stepped foot in the Post-Office? Been to a Blockbuster lately? Stood on an actual line to get tickets to a concert? How about had film developed?

Even our dating has moved online, with online matchmaking sites being one of the internet’s biggest businesses. Eharmony throws around the statistic that it is responsible for 2% of US marriages and a recent study says that up to 1 in 3 relationships today start online. Even crazier, 1 in 8 couples married in 2009 met via Social Media.

I think one of the biggest differences between generations is old friends. My parents have a tight circle of friends, but anyone they knew from high school or college that moved away from the area, they have little, if any contact with. This just sounds so alien to me. My best friends are scattered all over the country right now, but through twitter, Facebook, and texts… I have constant contact with them. Sure, its not physical, but its comforting to talk to people I have known since childhood.

I know that my parents think on some level what I do on the computer is almost akin to playing a video game. They can’t even fathom that I am actually talking to real people on Gchat, having interesting conversations on twitter, producing content that helps get my name out there, or god-forbid making money on the internet through freelance.

We are living in an absurdly exciting time. In my opinion, this could be looked back as one of the most important decades in history. We are (almost) all carrying pocket-sized computers which hold access to all of humanity’s knowledge. It’s a shame Douglas Adams died before he could see humanity with basically The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in our pockets. We are able to instantly connect us with anyone we want, even in video form. We get updated the second any important thing happens to our friends and family, and get the world news at basically the speed of light without the limitations of paper. Think about this: 150 years ago, it took the Pony Express ten days to get a letter from Missouri to San Francisco. Today, we can get a letter from Missouri to China in seconds.

From my parents, I have seen the wonder, but usually aversion to the progress that not only the internet, but the socially networked internet is bringing to the world. They are amazingly supportive of what I do with my life, but every so often things break down and they show just how much they don’t understand. Yes, I know that the largest growing group right now on Facebook is the 55+ year-olds, but for the most part, they aren’t using social media in every facet of their lives to the level the Generation-Y, Millennials are. I know there are many exceptions to what I am saying and I am sure any one listening to this podcast that is a Baby Boomer is one of those exceptions.

But I think I can safely say that Social Media is an invention forged by Millennials and younger Generation Xers.
Mark Zuckerburg founder of Facebook – 26.
Kevin Rose founder of Digg – 33.
Jack Dorsey co-founder of Twitter – 33.
David Karp founder of Tumblr – 24.

For a little comparison… When the Beatles came to America in 1964, largely regarded as one of the keystone moments in rock history, John Lennon was 24! 24! I’m 25 and I don’t think I’ve written anything as profound as Can’t Buy Me Love.

Then why this drive to spill our life and feelings out digitally in little bite-sized pieces? Well, let’s look at music’s equivalent of bite-sized spilling of life and feelings, Rock and Roll. Rock and Roll flourished in the 60’s and 70’s. For teenagers and Young Adults, it was a pretty disillusioning time. America was caught in seemingly unending war, there was a serious split between left and right political views, and the economy was in the toilet. Sounds familiar doesn’t it?

Like Rock, Social Media allows us to vent and feel connected to a greater whole. Like many people my age, I graduated into one of the worst economies in history with a masters and nothing to do with it. I have applied to over 150 jobs, attend meet-up groups monthly, but still have not found full-time employment. Instead of wallowing in self pity, I decided to put all my time that was not spent working on freelance or searching for full-time into jumping headfirst into Social Media, developing my own blogging collective of people in similar situations. I know I am far from the only one in my age group doing this thanks to the connections I’ve made online.

Neil Young said “Hey hey, my my, Rock and Roll will never die” and I think the same applies to Social Media. Sure it will become more and more mainstream, and one day will evolve into a part of everyone’s life. I am sure my age-group’s children will be all over it, in fact my feeds are filling with baby pictures at the moment. What I find even scarier than this is that this poor children could one day sign up for Facebook with 1,000 pictures of them already. You know those embarrassing pictures your mother shows to your friends when they visit? Oh boy…

Just as social media confuses my parents, I am sure these facebook feed babies will find something that confuses my generation.

I hate saying this. I really do. It makes me sound like a whiny brat. It makes me sound like a hippie/rocker/punk talking about their parents in the 60’s and 70’s. The millennial generation helped change the course of an election using Social Media electing the first black president, saved Conan O’Brien’s career with Team Coco, almost destroyed and then revitalized the music industry with MP3 downloading, and are completely changing the publication and advertising industries. To our generation this is exciting, this is ours, this is Rock ‘N Roll!

If you disagree with anything I said in this episode, please leave a comment below and to you I say relax, its only Social Media, but I like it, like it, yes I do.

For more of my nerdy content, check out TheModernDayPirates.com and follow me on twitter @BBwerner!

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Do you have “computer skills” listed on your resume? Get rid of it, it’s obsolete! I explain in this week’s podcast, or the blog post below.

Download the podcast from iTunes, or play it below:

Over the weekend, I met with a person I’m mentoring. She went to the same college as I did, found me through our alumni network, and wanted to talk about her next job and look over her resume.

One of the things that I saw on there that was interesting, was a section called “Computer Skills.”

I went through each of the items and called her on it:
- Adobe Bridge Software?
What is that? Is it important? No. Take it off.
- iMac basic programming?
You mean, you used an iMac computer and did some things? She nodded hesitantly. I asked her, do you REALLY know how to program? She shook her head no. Gone.
- Datanet and Filemaker?
OK, so you used these programs to maintain some files. But are you an expert at it and did you really use them all the time? Not really.
- Google Apps
I don’t mind that it’s on there, but she already used it earlier in the resume, so that one gets removed as well.
- Lastly, Microsoft Office
You graduated in 2008 with a Bachelor of Science degree. You live in New York City. You speak French and Italian.  You’ve managed to send me your resume converted into a PDF. Proving you know Office is pretty much understood.

So that got me to wondering.

For anyone that graduated with a Bachelors degree from the year 2000 and beyond, is the “computer skills” section of your resume completely obsolete?

And if the answer is yes, what goes in its place?

To answer that, we have to go old school for a minute. This is when having myself as your Generation X host comes in handy.

Need I remind you, I graduated in 1991, when there were NO cell phones, NO internet, NO email, and Photoshop 2.0 had just been released. For those keeping score, the concept of Photoshop layers wouldn’t be invented for 5 more years, and they’re basically up to version 12 now.

In my junior year Microsoft Windows 3.0 had just been released, along with Office version 1.0.

Social media? Ha!  Mark Zuckerberg was 7.

So as someone that legitimately graduated with a degree in Computer Information Systems, putting a “Computer Skills” section on your resume really meant something.

When I started doing most of the hiring for the multimedia startup I worked for in 1994, it was a real challenge to determine which people had true computer skills, and which had played a few hundred games of Solitaire on their computer and claimed they knew Windows.

Thus, I came up with a computer test that I gave during interviews to see how people shaped up. It became legendary around the office, as no candidate had ever received a perfect score.

What’s interesting is back then, typing speed was a huge differentiator. You could sit in the conference room with someone in their brand new suit and listen to them smoothly talk about their tech skills, but when you sat them down in front of a keyboard and asked them to drill down into a subdirectory and alt-tab to another open application, you knew right away.

Dug into the archives and actually found my resume from 12 years ago:

Computer skills on my 1998 resume:
HTML, JavaScript, Macromedia Director, Flash, & Dreamweaver, Adobe Photoshop & Premiere, Allaire HomeSite, Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet Explorer, SoundForge, InstallShield, Active Movie (MPEG), Video for Windows (AVI), Microsoft Office

Quite the list, right? Several of those are still relevant, but can you imagine listing a web browser as a computer skill these days? No.

Now it’s 2010, and I’m here to argue that “computer skills” are obsolete, and what is more important are “social media skills.” So how do I propose you address this new category?

Here are 7 things you can do to create a modern social media resume:

1) Your resume should be in the following formats:
- Created in Word or a graphics design program. Please, divert from the template at least a little bit… change the font, add some color, something.
- Save it in PDF format. This should be how you distribute it.
- Have a version that is able to be embedded in an email. If someone can’t get attachments, you may lose your chance. Note that you’ll need to go through and re-format bullets, lines, colors, italics and sizes, and replace with caps, asterisks, and spacing.
- Updated and accurate on LinkedIn.com

2) Depending on your job, you might need to list out skills. But if that’s the case, it’s probably not “computer skills.”
- If you’re listing things that I call “lots of letters” such as C++, HTML, CSS, PHP, Java, SQL … those should be under programming languages or coding skills.
- If you’re listing programs such as SPSS and MPlus, those are market research skills, not generic computer skills

3) Integrate these skills into your resume bullet points.
- When you say that you “Concatenated the quarterly earnings report into multi-tabbed color-coded pivot tables in Excel,” they’re going to assume you can find your way around a spreadsheet
- When you say you’ve created more than 50 animated banner ads, adhering to client and company specifications and optimized them for the corporate ad server, they get the point that you know Photoshop
- If you’re a sales rep and use salesforce.com or some similar program, put that under a bullet point and not out on it’s own

4) Really emphasize it
- This might be best in a cover letter or during an interview, but if you really really are an expert, feel free to have a little fun with it. Say that you’re so obsessed with Excel, that you also used that multi-tabbed, color-coded, pivot table spreadsheet template to plan your wedding.
- Or if you’re a book editor, say that you spend 20-30 hours per week using Microsoft Word’s “track changes” feature to easily communicate and collaborate with authors what suggestions you have for them

5) Replace “Computer Skills” with “Social Media Skills”
The key here is that if you list it, you better back it up. If you do it correctly, however, it can have a great effect. I can picture the following entry on a modern resume:

Social Media Skills
- Skilled in using web-based technologies to transform and broadcast media monologues into social media dialogues
- Fostered the creation and exchange of user-generated content to build value and brand loyalty for my company and reach influential consumers
- Actively maintain a personal Facebook account with more than 500 networking connections, providing a 2-way multimedia conversation: Facebook.com/yourname
- Build a loyal group of 1,300 Twitter fans in just 18 months, providing value, learning from industry experts, and staying current with technology: Twitter.com/yourname
- Explore the latest geolocation technology with Foursquare, connecting with online friends in the real world: foursquare.com/yourname
- Created an online video project using Final Cut Pro for my Team In Training charity group, spreading the word virally and totaling 3,300 hits: youtube.com/yourname
- Embraced my love for photography by uploading more than 400 photos on Flickr, including licensing some for distribution under creative commons; “Central Park at Dawn” photo has been used on 11 blogs and has 124 comments

6) Prove it in a portfolio
I feel that nearly every job-seeker out there – not just marketing or creatives – can benefit by putting together a portfolio.
- Were you just the lowly entry-level person checking names at the door at the big corporate gala? Well, I’m sure that event had a slick-looking invite or web page that you could print out to serve as a talking point for your contribution.
- Are you trying for your next accounting job in the finance department? Bring along one of your well-organized spreadsheets, showing how neatly you organize your numbers and graphs (changing any private company data)
- Bragging about your Powerpoint prowess? Throw in several example slides from your last few projects, using it as a talking point for why you chose the layout, the font, and the imagery

7) Prove it digitally
- It has the chance to backfire, but a well-produced video introduction will also go a long way to distinguish yourself from the competition (How NOT to do it below).

- The resume of the future will take place on the web. If you don’t own your name as a URL, grab it right now. Name taken? Try YourNameResume.com
Check out this as great example from Rohit Bhargava.
- Better yet, have you ever spoken at an event, done a podcast, or given a great presentation? Communication skills are paramount in the business world. If you can prove it, you can nail it.
- Are you a designer? How about presenting your resume or your latest project as a colorful Infographic?

(Graphic copyright JeffMcNeill via Flickr)
- Lastly, I’m proud that two of my former interns recently used a portfolio on the iPad during an interview to showcase what they’ve done. It shows they’re up on the latest technology, and it looked tremendous.

So to sum up, go ahead and drop that heading of “Computer Skills” from your resume and do one or more of the following:

1. Create your resume in multiple formats
2. If you do have a lot of specific skills, they can probably filed under programming skills or design skills or another category
3. Integrate these skills into your resume bullet points
4. If you’re a true expert and are going to list it, really emphasize it
5. Replace “Computer Skills” with “Social Media Skills”
6. Prove it in a portfolio
7. Prove it digitally

Doing so well set yourself apart in the digital age. Good luck.

The latest addition of WIRED magazine app on the iPad is out. You like Will Ferrell? Well, there are exclusive videos of him – only on the iPad, so be sure to check it out. As always, thanks for reading/listening.

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Today I’m going to talk about a concept that stems from a single word called “flow.” I’m not going to get too deep or spiritual with you, but I think it’s a very important state of mind to recognize and strive for, both in your life and in your work.

Download the podcast from iTunes, or play it below:

It’s approaching August here in New York City, which means it’s hot as hades, things are starting to slow down a bit, and in the next few weeks, both the city itself and the offices around town empty out as people end the summer with much-needed vacations before cranking things back up post Labor Day.

Quick flashback on my life … I lived in Seattle for 3 years and just about every Thursday after work when the weather was good, friends and I would head to a trail called Tiger Mountain just outside downtown to go mountain biking. It was the perfect release after 4 rough days of work, with a brutal 40 minute uphill climb the second you left the parking lot, followed by a 45 minute descent through rocks, roots, and flowing singletrack trails. On the weekends we’d venture further from the city and find other amazing trails. It was some of the best times of my life.

Needless to say, life changes pretty quickly in the concrete jungle of Manhattan. Gone were the days of throwing the bike on the roof rack of the car on a whim and being on a trail in under an hour.  Now my mountain bike adventures are few and far between.

It wasn’t until last holiday season that I rented a mountain bike for a day while in Santa Monica, CA and hit a half decent trail that I truly remembered how much I loved biking. I immediately pledged to do a more formal trip this summer, and that’s what is in the works now, piggybacking a visit back to Seattle to bike again and then on to Durango, CO for hopefully some of the best biking in the U.S.

The day after the details came together, I was listening to the Adam Carolla Podcast and Adam was talking about a dream he had. He told how he flashed back to when he was younger and playing baseball as a centerfielder. He meticulously described a scene where a ball is hit and immediately at the crack of the bat, you’re turning and sprinting toward the wall because you know it’s over your head. You’re completely in the zone, looking back over your shoulder to spot the ball, adjusting on the fly, tracking it down, and everything immediately comes together and you make the catch.

During this time, there’s no way you’re thinking about your mortgage, or the fight you had with your wife, or the rude person at the airport. Your body takes over on instinct and you’re in the zone.

While I’ve certainly heard of being in the zone for sports, his sidekick Teresa Strasser jumped in and gave one of the best supporting information I think she’s ever done, talking about the psychological state of “flow.”

Like being in the zone, it’s a state that your mind blocks out all the foreign disruptors, from problems at home to the fans screaming at the top of their lungs. But she also mentioned that it’s more than that — there needs to be several factors present.

Let me note that many of the definitions below are taken from Wikipedia so I’ll let them take it from here…

Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. Proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi (MEE-hye CHICK-sent-me-high-ee | photo via his Facebook fan page), he identifies the following ten factors as accompanying an experience of flow:

1. Clear goals
2. A high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention
3. A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.
4. Distorted sense of time, one’s subjective experience of time is altered.
5. Direct and immediate feedback.
6. Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult).
7. A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.
8. The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action.
9. A lack of awareness of bodily needs (to the extent that one can reach a point of great hunger or fatigue without realizing it)
10. People become absorbed in their activity, and focus of awareness is narrowed down to the activity itself, action awareness merging.

By complete coincidence, while on his wiki page, turns out Csíkszentmihályi did an interview with Wired back in 1996, talking about flow in terms of website design.

I immediately understood that this was why I loved mountain biking (and for that matter skiing and driving the perfect car on the perfect twisty road) so much. It’s a very different activity versus lying on the beach or watching a movie or doing a very difficult crossword puzzle.

The reason is because it’s not necessarily an easy activity. You get a feeling of accomplishment because you are exerting effort and skill to achieve something. Yet, once you get decent at it, it’s not an activity that is so difficult that it causes you to have anxiety.

What’s more, as you speed down the mountain on a challenging trail, you are constantly – constantly! – racing your mind at a mile a minute calculating your next move. It’s bang bang bang:

- Look ahead
- See the obstacle
- Pick a line
- Make the adjustment
- Repeat.

Let’s look at what other activities are associated with achieving flow:

Sports – From the greatest players in basketball to the best golfers in the world, many describe being in the zone when the basket or the cup seems so large that you just can’t miss. Baseball players see the baseball coming at them as a floating beachball and not a 98mph fastball. Marathoners talk of a ”runners’s high” when the pavement melts away and you feel like you can run for miles.

Arts – Wikipedia says that Historical sources hint that Michelangelo may have painted the ceiling of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel while in a flow state. It is reported that he painted for days at a time, and he was so absorbed in his work that he did not stop for food or sleep until he reached the point of passing out. He would wake up refreshed and, upon starting to paint again, re-entered a state of complete absorption.

Music – Every band will tell you that the goal is to get everyone “in the pocket,” when every member is acting as one, anticipating each other’s direction, nailing every note and transition, syncing up bass and drums, and moving from one song to the next. Also from Wikipedia, lyricists (particularly hip-hop Emcees) who freestyle experience flow when formulating rhymes off the top of his or her head. This is commonly known in hip-hop culture as “flowing”.

Alas, my writing flow has been broken a bit and I need to steer this some sort of marketing angle. But that’s ok, I’m on a roll.

Business

Is there such a thing as your business and marketing plans entering a state of flow? I believe there is. Wrangling all the elements of social media is certainly a challenge for any marketing manager. On Wired alone I can think of 11 elements:

Magazine, website, iPad, podcasts, video, newsletters, emails, mobile, Facebook, Twitter, and live events.

How can you hope to sync them all? That is your goal. It’s important to remember that all of the things I’ve listed perform different functions. The voice you bring on Facebook is different than that on your newsletters and on Twitter. It is a mistake to try and bring absolute uniformity. That would be like trying to keep your elbows and knees at a 45 degree angle at all times while biking.

No, what you need to do is look at the ultimate goal. In biking, it’s getting down the mountain in one piece while having the maximum amount of fun. In marketing, it’s representing your product according to the goals you want to achieve.

That means your logo and color scheme should be similar across all platforms. That means the voice of all your writers and editors should be aligned. And that means whether a customer experiences your product on the web or on twitter, they feel at home with the brand.

Life

Lastly, I’ll leave you with the hope that you can find your flow in life. That comes when the elements of your career, relationships, health, wealth, work, play, and the environment in which you live all come together.

Have a great summer.

I hope you enjoy the 10-30 minutes when I get into my podcast flow each week, and if you do, please tell your friends to visit TheHopkinsonReport.com.

Let me know how YOU find your flow. Write me marketing guy @ wired.com

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Jim’s guest is Deanna Zandt, author of a social media book. They talk about how she got a book deal, raised money to fund it, and how she got free pizza.

Download the podcast from iTunes, or play it below:

Deanna Zandt is the author of the new book, “Share This! How You Will Change the World with Social Networking” which you can find out more about at her website, DeannaZandt.com.

During our interview, we talk about the following topics:
- How the former corporate employee and self-proclaimed ‘webmonkey’ went from independent consultant to author
- The process she took to turn her training seminars into a book idea
- The “Jedi Mind Trick” philosophy her publisher uses, and how she used “the force” of social media to raise funds in order to work on her book
- How she used crowdsourcing on everything from the title to the cover — and how people reacted to it
- The free software program she used to dramatically ramp up her productivity during the writing process

And yes, she explains how she scored a free eye exam and free pizza along the way.

Give a listen.

Twitter: Deanna | HopkinsonReport

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Apple’s iPad is flying off the shelves. Jim gives his real-world results after 30 days with it, reviews the Wired Magazine app, analyzes market share trends and asks, can it be beat?

Download the podcast from iTunes, or play it below:

iPad iPad iPad.
Everyone is talking about the iPad, and so am I. Lets take a look at three things today:

1) My experience with the iPad 3G after one month with the iPad
2) My thoughts on the Wired Magazine iPad app
3) Analyze Apple’s historic marketshare and drill down to see the future of tablet computing and if the iPad can be beat

Note: All thoughts are my own opinion and not that of Wired or Apple. I have no affiliation with Apple and was not compensated.

Summary of the podcast below. Listen to the entire show for the full experience.

OK, so I’ve had the iPad for 30 days of real world testing.

I’ve installed various apps: the Entertainment Weekly Must List and Weather Channel (good, but could use some work), ones with solid functionality (Kayak, Pandora, MLB at Bat), ones that I normally wouldn’t use (Marvel’s comic book reader and games such as Asphalt 5 and Labyrinth), and Conde Nast’s own (Epicurious, GQ, and Wired).

The best part about these apps, is the ease that you can simply install them, check them out, and delete them if you don’t like it. While it does add to this constant ADD, “try it and forget it” world, it really puts the pressure on developers to create visually-appealing, easy to use apps right out of the box. You might only have 5 minutes to hook someone, or it’s delete and move on to the next program. That’s why I think the “Lite for free, pay for upgrade” model works so well here.

People are going to continue to find new and inventive ways to use the iPad. For example, check out uber-designer Brandon Werner’s “iPadfolio” (best viewed on an iPad). He used it in an interview and blew them away.

Things that I’m looking to do more of in the coming months are:
- Download and read more iBooks
- See a Facebook app for the iPad (they have to be working on one, right?)
- Get Apple’s SD card attachment so I can transfer photos from my DSLR right to the iPad

Real life use
As many others have probably noted, the iPad is the king of the couch surfer. It is fantastic around the house, especially for the short time each day that I finally relax (when I’m not out or working on 3 blogs) and turn on the TV. As I predicted, it’s such a better device to do the following:
- Check and respond to quick emails
- Surf the web
- Check Twitter
- View photos

Yes, you can do all this on a bigger, heavier, hotter laptop, but it’s a faster, quicker, more focused experience.

Road test: Family trip
I went to visit my brother’s family in Austin, TX, traveling there with my parents. Results were:
- First and foremost, I did not have to take out the iPad when going through security
- It was great on the plane… it’s instant-on, I didn’t worry about battery life, I watched video, read the GQ magazine app, and easily tucked it into the seatback during meals
- I let a 5-year old play with it at one point, and she instantly bonded (apologies to her parents, who will probably need to spend $500 to get her to stop talking about it at some point). We downloaded Tic Tac Toe and iSpy and had a few spirited matches, and it was amazing how kick-ass she was at the driving video game. Although it was tough for me to tell a white lie and console her when the game yells “YOU LOSE!” if you don’t finish in the top 3.
- I also let my parents (both over 65) use it. They approached it like a cat sneaking up on something new in the yard, and pretty much got the hang of it using maps and music. I did run into one issue, as my mom was trying to check her email in Safari (my email is set up as the default in the app). She was using the updated, flash-based version of Yahoo mail, and it wasn’t rendering correctly. It was just weird enough looking that she NEVER would have figured it out (most people wouldn’t), it was only because I noticed it and changed here to “Yahoo Classic” email that we were able to move on.

Camping trip
First, let me lay out my street cred. I’ve done my fair share of camping and consider myself a pretty good outdoorsman. Yes, I’m an actual Eagle Scout, something that 95% of scouts never attain.

Now let me destroy that street cred. Mostly as a fun test, a friend and I went camping in upstate New York (I did my first trail running race). Not only did we use Google maps on the iPad to locate a diner 2 exits away for dinner instead of cooking, but that night we hunkered down in the tent and watched a movie. Yes, I brought along a $639 iPad camping. And yes, it was awesome.

Road trip
I’m putting this to the test this week, bringing the iPad on a long road trip. As a combo GPS device, movie player, musical jukebox, e-mail checker, and with the “Gas Log” app, it should come in handy.

Thoughts on Wired Magazine’s iPad app
It was really interesting working on such a cool project, and seeing the initial success of 24,000 downloads in 24 hours.

Let’s get the two big questions out of the way:

- 500 MB in size
Yes, that is a very large size, especially for those with the 16GB model. Wired feels that the technology will evolve and the app will get smaller in future versions. The tradeoff was video. By including the video within the app, that allowed for a more seamless process and users could read the entire magazine without being connected to the web. I’m sure if we did NOT include it, people would be complaining that every time they got to a video they had to wait longer for it to play. Perhaps there’s a middle ground where users are asked to download or stream upon install (not sure if that’s technically feasible).

- $5 per issue cost
It’s really quite simple.
- When viewed against the cost of a year-long print subscription ($10 per year), the cost of the app seems six times higher. People make the analogy that they pay $10 per year for the Wired Magazine paper subscription, so why should they pay $60 per year for the electronic version.
- When viewed against the newsstand price of $5 (which 80,000-100,000 non-subscribing Wired fans pay every single month), it’s exactly the same.

At it’s core, this is a slice of media entertainment.
- Millions of people pay $5 a pop for magazines at newsstands, airports, and in supermarket checkout lines every month
- The Wall Street Journal charges $4 per week for their iPad application
- Netflix customers pay a monthly fee for video entertainment
- The latest blockbuster movie is $12.50 a ticket here in NYC for 2 hours of entertainment last time I checked
- And don’t get me started on what I pay for cable each month

Bottom line, the Wired Magazine iPad app gives you several hours of media entertainment for $5. And yes, Conde Nast is “exploring many ways of making it easier for users to enjoy our content.” IE, they’re looking at the best way to make some kind of subscription program work.

Areas for improvement
Just so you don’t think I’m a total homer, here are things that I think can be improved with the app
- Better navigation indicators. Because this is such a new device, I think it’s ok to treat users a little bit more dumbed down to start. My guess is that it was partially done on purpose, as it makes the user explore the app and find new features. I’m not asking for giant blinking “click here” buttons, but there were a few small areas where it could have guided me better. That being said, I was a pro by the time I finished the entire issue.
- Navigating the fun stuff. The great part about the app is the interactive features… swirling, twirling hearts and planets, and stop motion legos. But I sometimes had trouble when I wanted to swipe to the next page, but the app still thought I wanted to swirl.
- Pinch and zoom. Once you get used to pinching and zooming all over the iPad, you miss it if you come across something and are not allowed to do so. This was the case for most of the app, except for some sections that let you do this.
- As others have pointed out, there is a slight disconnect when say, playing a movie clip and it brings you outside the app, plays it, and then returns, vs. keeping you right where you are. I don’t know for sure, but my guess is that it will continue to be more streamlined.

What I loved
- The app, taking advantage of the hardware itself, is crazy bright and easy to read. Vibrant. Glowing.
- I loved the interactive touch buttons to flip multiple views. Swiping from page to page is — let’s say it — fun, but it’s also a great experience to stay on one page, and view multiple views or photos by tapping numbered dots
- The fun stuff. The ultimate goal of the app is to combine the best of print and the web in an engaging environment. This was best seen in the “Most Dangerous Object in the Office” section. This month it was a flaming hacky sack. Reading about it in print? Interesting. Actually SEEING two employees flailing around with a fiery footbag of flames in the bathroom at the Wired office in SF? Amazing.
- The extras. Ironman spining around, lego Lamborghinis, Toy Story clips, exclusive Trent Reznor songs… all of this adds to the experience.

The Ads
Call me crazy, but sometimes I LIKE looking at ads. I like seeing cool companies launch cool products that I might want to get. And stop groaning, this is a marketing podcast and blog, you knew it was coming.

But here’s the thing. You get to experience it under YOUR terms. Watching live TV? Sorry, sit through the ads. On DVR? get that fast forward button ready. In a magazine? It’s an easy page turn. On the web? Better hope that peripheral vision is working to block out things if you don’t want to see it.

But on the iPad? If you don’t like the ad — swipe — it’s gone. Instantly. If you DO choose to learn more, you can take it to the next level. My favorites were as follows.

For simply clean, crisp, uncluttered product messages:
- Dyson Fans
- Intel
- Mercedes (with great commercial embedded)
- GMC

For excellent photos that looking practically 3D on the iPad:
- True Blood
- Jack Daniels
- Volkswagen
- Infiniti

And remember, THIS IS VERSION 1! Developers, writers, editors, programmers, and advertisers are only going to get better at this.

Can it be beat?

Lets look at four categories that Apple is in, and what kind of market share they command.

First, where am I coming from? I am a computer guy. I Love all technology. Love good technology. I’ve been literally using computers for more than 25 years.
First 21 on a PC, last 4 on a Mac.
- Macbook pro at home, Dell laptop at work
- iPhone for personal use, Treo for work email
- iPod touch and Nano
- 1 iPad

Computers
I think that Macs are beautifully designed, easier to use, easier to get tech support, don’t get viruses, are more expensive, and are definitely the computer system that I’ve switched over to, that I see myself using moving forward, and that I would recommend to a friend. However, there is absolutely no denying the market share numbers.

Apple owns just 10% of the personal computer market. That means 9 out of every 10 computers out there are not made by Apple.

But in doing my research I came across this amazing article on Techcrunch from July 2009, that said Apple owns 91% market share on computers above $1000.

So is Apple winning in the computer department? In the big picture, no. There are countless millions of PCs around the world running Windows, the vast majority of businesses and IT departments are locked in with the PC/Windows platform, and will be for some time. It’s a tough process to switch. This is business device in a mature market.

But can Apple win the upper end of the market where profits are greater? Looks like they already are.

MP3 Players
What is the market share of the iPod vs other MP3 players? It tough for me to find the latest and greatest stats, but one blog from Sep 2009 said that iPods had a 74% market share. I’d call that dominant. Lets put it this way, do YOU have any friends that have a non-Apple MP3 player? If you were out to buy a new device, would YOU consider something else? I thought so.

My point is this… this is a non-business device, in a relatively new market. And Apple dominates it.

Phones
What I am about to say might sound familiar. I think that the iPhone is beautifully designed, easier to use, easier to get tech support, is more expensive, and is definitely the phone that I’ve switched over to, that I see myself using moving forward, and that I would recommend to a friend. Kind of like the Mac.

But in terms of marketshare, it’s also like the Mac. A recent report just found that Android phones outsold the iPhone in the first quarter of 2010. What was Apple’s share of the smartphone market? Just 21%. Again, the stats show that it is hardly dominant.

A cell phone is a mix of business and pleasure, and is definitely a mature market. The iPhone will continue to do well, but won’t necessarily dominate.

But here are the numbers that astound:
- 50 million iPhones sold to date
- App Store carries 200,000 apps
- 3 billion app downloads

Even more telling, Ars Technica reported: Apple responsible for 99.4% of mobile app sales in 2009

Tablet computers
What is Apple’s market share in tablets? Let’s not include the Kindle since that is primarily a dedicated e-reader and not a computer. So who is their competition? The Archos 5 Tablet? The Samsung NP-Q1u? Let me know when you find someone that owns one of those. All I know is that they’ve sold 2 million iPads in under 60 days. I’d say that puts them at 99% market share.

So, where does that leave us? Is the iPad like the iPhone and Mac, where it will face stiff competition from it’s known enemies, Dell, HP, and Google?

I’m going to say no. My gut tells me it’s going to play out a lot like the iPod. This is a new device, and an entertainment device. Yes, there will be competition at the lower levels, but the great equalizer is the App Store.

If someone came up to me and said “Should I get an iPad or should I wait for one by Google or HP? I hear they might have more storage, be cheaper, have USB ports, play flash, and so on.” I totally agree.

But again, it’s the App Store. That’s the killer product that will prevent me from recommending other devices.

So if someone asks me, should I get the iPad? I would say can you afford it and when would you use it? It’s best as a companion device, is great for light travel, and is king of the couch.

If they ask if they should wait to get next year’s iPad, I say no. Of course it will be better, and if you’re very patient, then go ahead and wait an entire year. But remember that there will be software updates before then that will raise the bar a bit.

If they ask if they should wait for another company’s tablet, I say they are coming, they will be cheaper, and have some better features, but ask yourself this:

- How long till there is a similar app store that has all the games you want to play?
- Do you sync your music with your iPod?
- Where are you going to download movies from?
- Do they have a better way to read books?

So do you agree with me?

Apple has sold 2 million devices.
They have a huge lead on the competition.
Almost every developer right now is working on iPad apps, not other apps
And when new tablets appear in six months to a year, remember that Apple will have been working on their new version for a year as well.

So I ask you. Can the iPad be beat?

Email: MarketingGuy [at] wired.com
Twitter: @hopkinsonreport

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Jim talks about what Sting and The Police can teach us about finding your voice when blogging or podcasting.

Download the podcast from iTunes, or play it below:

Passion.
Millions of teachers, authors, parents, friends, clergy, poets, and musicians have tried to help others find their passions. But I’ll tell you where you can find yours.

In your voice.

When you’re speaking about something you’re truly passionate about, there’s a change in your tone. Your heart beats a little faster, your eyes get a little wider, and sometimes the thoughts and ideas cascade from your brain so quickly that they trip over themselves in a rush to exit your mouth.

Lord knows any regular listener to the podcast, or someone that has seen one of my presentations, knows that I get really excited and talk super fast when I’m fired up about a topic.

But I want to go back to that first sentence. Millions of teachers, authors, parents, friends, clergy, poets, and musicians have tried to help others find their passions.

Who are the people in your life that have led you to take up one of your passions?

- Maybe your dad was a huge sports fan, so you became one as well.
- Maybe an author wrote a book so compelling, that you instantly started a hobby based around their words.
- Or maybe your best friend turned you on to wine or yoga or mountain biking.

But what about music?
I had an interesting conversation with my mom this past weekend. She asked me about my little nephew. He is a little young for his age compared to his peers, and my sister is thinking of enrolling him in a cultural school program for a year before he goes to kindergarten.

My mom asked me what I thought. I told her I think it is probably a little better to be a bit older than your friends in class than a bit younger. And I also thought that maybe the teachers there could steer him in a direction that could really bring out his strengths. Maybe they have amazing, experienced teachers that would be able to read him and see if he was introverted, or analytic-minded, or broad-thinking, and this might translate specifically to writing songs or playing a specific instrument.

I’m no pro, but I’m going to guess that a certain type of mindset would lend itself to playing the violin vs the drums.

I’ll also tell you the way NOT to do it.

In one of my earliest memories – man, I hadn’t thought of this in 20 years – I specifically remember “band day.” They asked if anyone wanted to be in a band, and they sent us home with a sheet of paper with all the instruments. They had little outlines, and the words next to them.

You know how I picked mine?

I don’t either! I looked at this list, pointed at one, and said “How about that?” You know what it was?

The clarinet! How freaking useless is the clarinet!!!

Flash forward a year and I was terrible at it, not to mention that one of the most important and time consuming activities to playing it was not learning notes or reading music, but cleaning the spit out of it! There was an entire process and set of tools simply for cleaning spit! I’m serious!

In college I picked up guitar, but was equally as bad. It was only when I randomly sat down at a party at a friends drum kit at age twenty-three –- 23! -– and simply ‘knew’ how to play, that I had finally found my instrument. Don’t get me wrong, I am still pretty bad, but I was good enough to be in bands that played live in Boston and New York City.

I tease my mom because when she and my dad finally came to see me live, she told me, “I always knew you had rhythm. You were always banging on pots and pans as a toddler and always had great rhythm.”

So I’d yell, “Why the heck didn’t you tell me to play the drums when I was 5 then??? By the time I was 23 I’d have been a rock star and we’d have houses in Boston, New York, LA, and Tahiti!”

But I digress. See, I got excited right there. I’m pretty passionate about music.

Which gets me back to that first line, which is very close to a 20th Century British philosopher named Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner. Although you might know him as Sting.

And the timeless words that he uttered were

De do do do, De da da da

No, actually, the words are:

Poets priests and politicians
Have words to thank for their positions

If you phrase that in terms of social media, maybe the three categories are bloggers, podcasters, and marketing/public relations.

These are truly people that rely on their words. They need to be crafted just right, and the proper ones can motivate and inspire to action, but also get you into trouble.

But then it goes on.

Words that scream for your submission
And no-one’s jamming their transmission

Well, maybe that should translate to “words that scream for your engagement.” Listen to me. Buy my book. Follow me on Twitter. Listen to what I have to say. Look over here at my Facebook page.

And like I’ve mentioned in the podcast before, no-one’s jamming their transmission. You don’t need to work for a newspaper or radio station anymore. Anyone can start their own blog or podcast and begin transmitting.

I had an idea that I was going to do my entire presentation based on songs from The Police. The problem is, they might have been Driven To Tears. You see, the first rule of presentations is to know your audience, and I found out that the majority of people in the room would be people aged 22-26. Considering that The Police broke up in 1984, the same year the oldest person in the room was born, I probably would have lost my audience pretty quickly.

But hey, I’m pretty sure my podcast audience is a little bit older than that, so let me end the podcast with a few quotes from Sting and The Police. And listen you kids, if you haven’t sat down and really listened to them, give ‘em a try.

The number one way to find your voice is to dig deep about what your passionate about. What do you get excited about? Where do you find the drama in your life? If you’re in a relationship, and it vacillates between I Can’t Stand Losing You and The Bed’s Too Big Without You, then maybe you should talk about the interconnection between men and women, or companies and products.

Or if you’re more about finding Spirits in the Material World that we live in, religion is a massive area that you could write or speak about.

If you start out with a podcast, remember that Every Breath You Take is important. While I do tend to speed up while I talk, I feel that I’m still in control of my speech and never out of breath. Grab yourself one of those pop shields as well so that you’re not spitting into the mic.

One thing to get down right away has to do with Synchronicity. Podcasts generate a lot of files, from original recordings, to word docs, to images, to MP3 files. I have a pretty locked in system for recording on my home laptop, backing up to an external drive, transferring to a thumb drive, copying it again at my work computer.

Lastly, don’t worry if you don’t have much of an audience when you’re starting out. Just get going, find your voice and be consistent. You might feel that you’re So Lonely, that it’s as if you’re sending out a tiny Message in a Bottle. But if you keep it up, the audience will come and soon you’ll be Walking on the Moon.

PS… I refrained from crooning Roxanne during the podcast outtro, but c’mon, you know right now you’re singing it in your head in that really really high voice. Aha. I thought so.

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In this episode, I interview entrepreneurs Michael Lewis and Tim Kress-Spatz from Suite Arrival, a new business that lets you be discreet, get a treat to eat, and keep your travel plans neat.

Download the podcast from iTunes, or play it below:

We’ve all been there
Admit it, the TSA and the terrorists have combined to make it much more difficult to travel. Long gone are the days of rolling up to the airport for that 10:15 flight at 9:45.

Oh no… you’ve got to get there early, have all your IDs ready, make sure your bags are not too plentiful (the fees! the fees!) or too heavy, watch out for metal belt buckles, take off those shoes, remove those jackets, and take out your laptops (which can only add to the fact that 10,000 laptops are stolen from airports PER WEEK).

In my blog post about packing for a business trip, (What’s in the bag? How to pack for business travel plus Jim’s 5 MVP travel picks) I give several ways you can ease the travel burden.

But a new site called Suite Arrival (website | Twitter) has an idea so simple and so useful, that even a bumbling shoebomber can see the appeal.

If you hate the following…
- Having to pack mini-toiletries every trip
- Squeezing them into a baggie and running them through security
- Taking your favorite products that only come in 12oz containers and transferring them to smaller ones
- Shopping for your products once you arrive in a new city
- Arriving to your hotel tired and hungry, and getting charged $6 for a Snickers from the mini-bar
- When your wife or girlfriend finds “personal protection” in your travel case right before your trip to Vegas*

Well, then you might want to take a look at Suite Arrival.

* I joke! I joke! All of my readers are upstanding citizens and would never stray… this is just so the maid or your roommate won’t find these items stashed under your sink.

They offer a bunch of products for you to choose from, and have even packaged several ‘kits’, including ones for him, ones for her, an organic kit, an action kit, and a wanderlust kit.

If this is starting to sound like a commercial, it’s not.

Disclosure that I was not compensated in any way, and in fact, they want to give discounts to YOU. Just enter code “WIREDJIM.”

I just like covering cool people with cool ideas that solve real problems.

Once we cover what they do, we get into the conversation and discuss:
- How did Mike and Tim get started?
- How are they marketing their company?
- What are the biggest challenges facing them as entrepreneurs?
- What travel-based trends have they seen emerge from their service?
- How are travel needs different for a woman? (our third guest, Autumn, chimes in)
- What types of things they add on their 2nd and 3rd iteration of the website?
- What are the alternate streams of revenue they are pursuing?

So if you like to travel, but hate the airport experience, have a listen:
Download the podcast from iTunes

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This episode is an interview I did at SXSW with Matthew Inman, the author of the popular web comic called The Oatmeal. Find out how he went from social media favorite to a book deal.

Download the podcast from iTunes, or play it below:

Background
Matt got his start at online marketing and SEO firm SEOMoz. He went from there to coding an online dating site completely by himself in just 66 hours, and then turning around and selling it in only six months. The key discovery while he was there? The comics, quizzes and viral content he used to market the site were even more popular than the site itself. And thus while concentrating on just the viral comics themselves, The Oatmeal was born.

Topics covered:
- “From brain to page” … Who can build a company faster, a small company or a one-mail operation?
- What was the transition like moving from Idaho to Seattle during the dotcom boom and bust
- What is the current state of SEO?
- In the end, Matt feels that all search engine optimization comes down to two major things. Find out what they are.

How to use social media to build traffic to your website.
- To generate links to his bunkbed site, he created a funny 10 question comic-style quiz titled “How long could you survive chained to a Bunk Bed with a Velociraptor?”
- The quiz got popular and people shared it around the internet, were linking to the site and talking about bunkbeds, so the site was able to rank first for that keyword.
- Put it this way… I only made it one minute and 6 seconds.

How does Matt come up with some of his most creative titles?
- 5 very good reasons to punch a dolphin in the mouth
- 10 reasons to avoid talking on the phone
- How to use a semicolon, the most feared punctuation on earth
- How a web design goes straight to hell
- How to suck at Facebook

What is the best way to get on reddit and Digg?
Social news sites reddit.com (owned by the company I work for, Conde Nast) and Digg.com have notoriously fickle audiences. Companies know that getting to the frontpage can mean an avalanche of traffic to their website, but their communities also have the power to bury a story or give it a life of its own. While you might not like the straightforward answer Matt gives, it makes a lot of sense and he goes on to tell a few helpful ways to phrase your post to help things along.

How do you turn a web comic into a book deal?
Matthew is working on a book with publisher Andrews McMeel, who also did Calvin and Hobbes, The Far Side, and Dilbert. He took an odd route when approached by several publishers and an agent, and gives his advice to people doing web comics and wanting to get published. He feels the community ‘rewards’ him for being just an independent guy trying to succeed.

What’s next for the Oatmeal?
- Stand up comedy?
- Animated shorts?
- How are porta-pottys involved?

Check out a 3 minute documentary about Matthew on Carson Daly:

Twitter.com/HopkinsonReport
Twitter.com/Oatmeal
Theoatmeal.com
Book – Coming this Spring

Also see: Hopkinson Report interview with Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman, cofounders of reddit.com

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How does a company turn their email file into a list of powerful social media influencers? They go to Flowtown.

Download the podcast from iTunes, or play it below:

Podcast Episode 101 is an interview I did at SXSW with Ethan Bloch of Flowtown.com, a service that turns email addresses into social profiles. After discussing the best way to survive the festival on no sleep and Green Tea, Jim gets down to business to find out Ethan’s story.

Topics covered:

About Ethan
- Ethan’s amazing start as an entrepreneur, importing video game components and driving $13,000 worth of revenue — at age 13!
- How marketing, finance, and technology have been the three pillars of his career thus far
- His move to San Francisco, subsequent job loss, and founding of a new business

About Flowtown
- A platform that allows businesses to connect with their customers
- Starting with their email list, Flowtown generates a list of the social networks their customer base is on, allowing them to write better posts, send better tweets, and more easily target their customers
- Not only does Flowtown return age, gender, networks, and the top 50 locations, but it then creates a sort of “iTunes Smartlist for Marketers,” showing the top 50 influencers that really move the needle

The Marketing Angle
- What is Flowtown’s approach to marketing their business?
- Where does Flowtown get their customers?
- Is all this a good thing? What about user’s personal information being exposed?
- Is email dead?

Advice for Startups
- What are the challenges of being a startup?
- What is the main advantages of being a small company?
- How the “lean startup” process enables them to make quick advances in technology
- Lessons learned through a failed project, which led to 3,500 new customers on their next project

Try it yourself
Check out flowtown.com and enter your e-mail address (it’s not stored) to find out which networks you’re on.

Follow us on Twitter: Ethan | Jim

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