Archive for the Pop Culture / Entertainment Category

This is part of the series: How to work remotely from Buenos Aires
Working while traveling is great, as long as you leave enough time to do the fun stuff!
Here is a list of 10 things to do in Buenos Aires, Argentina:
1. Chill out, eat, or work from one of the many great cafes.
Two favorites for me included Mott with their impressive bar (Top photo, above) and Bar 6.
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Over the weekend of November 11th, I experienced what seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime trip. I was fortunate to be chosen as one of several “new media influencers” to try out a new service called “Lux Delux.”
But in reality, treating yourself to an amazing experience filled with top of the line customer service doesn’t have to be once-in-a-lifetime; Lux Delux aims to be the chosen service for anyone that wants this experience throughout the year.
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Jim has a high-energy interview with author, speaker, and social media pro Krista Neher.
- Download podcast: Via iTunes | Save to computer (Right click, Save As)
- Play it below:
This week I had a great interview with with author, speaker, and social media pro Krista Neher.
As usual, for the full interview — and trust me, we had great energy and lots of fun sharing stories — make sure to download and play the podcast. The summary below highlights what we cover:
Krista’s background
- Her start at Proctor and Gamble
- Working on marketing for brands like Tide and Folgers Coffee
- Her transition to a startup
- The founding of Bootcamp Digital, which teaches companies how to use the web and social media to build their business
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Jim talks about how to overcome fear in your life and Jonathan Fields’ new book Uncertainty.
- Download podcast: Via iTunes | Save to computer (Right click, Save As)
- Play it below:
One of the best compliments anyone ever paid to me actually had to do with this podcast. I was walking down the street in New York with my girlfriend at the time, and we were talking about the origins of how I started this show. I was recanting about the things I had gone through, pitching the idea to Wired, setting everything up on the technical side, designing the website, and lining up people to interview and topics to talk about. Now that it is up and running a weekly routine, sometimes I forget how much effort went into the initial setup.
We stopped for a moment and she looked over at me and said,
‘You never once thought about what would happen if it failed, did you?’
It was an interesting question… one that caught me by surprise and made me stop and really think about the answer, transporting myself back through time to put myself in that place when I was just starting out. I thought long and hard, did an honest assessment, and then gave her my answer:
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Jim interviews Rey Flemings, the cofounder and chief executive of Stipple, a company trying to revolutionize online photos.
- Download podcast: Via iTunes | Save to computer (Right click, Save As)
- Play it below:
Photographs. With billions of Facebook photos being tagged, Tumblr, Flickr, Instagram, camera phones, Flip cameras, low-cost high-res DSLRs and more, there’s no doubt there’s huge numbers — and business potential — around this industry.
One of the companies trying to take advantage of this is Stipple. I spoke with cofounder Rey Flemings, and you can listen to the entire podcast for his insights. Highlights include:
What is Stipple?
Imagine this: You tag a photo in Facebook, but your friend grabs it and brings it outside Facebook’s network and puts it on their blog. Thus, you lose all of the tags.
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People talk a lot about their real-world career, but sometimes it’s the part-time jobs of youth that define you as a person.
- Download podcast: Via iTunes | Save to computer (Right click, Save As)
- Play it below:
What do you do for a living?
When you’re asked that question in “real life,” you rarely start with your current job and go all the way back to your very first part time jobs. But in a way, what you did for money as a teen, be it babysitting, lifeguarding, or cleaning out your Dad’s garage, can have a profound effect on your life.
OK, so the jobs I list below aren’t really THAT crappy (it made for a better headline), but they weren’t always glorious either. However, they did teach me some valuable life lessons.
As always, listen to the podcast for the full show. Highlights below:
The Job: Paperboy
Lesson Learned:
- Consistency (If you didn’t deliver every single day, someone was not going to be happy)
- Delayed gratification (Friends want to play baseball? Not till your route is done)
- Value of money (You mean the harder I work, the more money I’ll have for arcade video games? Ah, I get it now)
- Stay away from large German Shepherds (Seriously. I was chased and bitten several times)
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After reading the book Strengths Finder, Jim asks if it is better to capitalize on strengths or improve weaknesses
- Download podcast: Via iTunes | Save to computer (Right click, Save As)
- Play it below:
Are you a well-rounded person? Maybe you shouldn’t be.
I had the chance to read a book called StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath, and the entire book can be summed up with one theory: People spend too long trying to improve their weaknesses, when they should be capitalizing on their strengths.
Listen to the podcast for the full review, but here are my highlights:
How I found out about the book
Love when this happens:
- Co-worker walked in with it, and it sounded familiar
- Then I remembered that the Internet Business Mastery guys had talked about it, and I had it in the back of my mind to check it out
- Of all people, my hand therapist perked up when I mentioned it, as it was required reading for all the employees at her business
- When I walked in to Barnes and Noble, there it was prominently being displayed – at 30% off
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Today I interview Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn and self-published author of the religious thriller, Pentecost.
- Download the podcast via iTunes
- Download the podcast to your computer (Right click, Save As)
- Play it below:
For the full interview — a must-listen for anyone wanting to self-publish their own book — please listen to the podcast.
Summary of Topics covered:
Joanna’s amazing journey
Joanna Penn has had quite an amazing journey from the UK and a Theology major at Oxford (hence the religious thriller), all the way to New Zealand and Australia, and now back to the UK.
As a full-time IT employee, she started her writing career with non-fiction books such as How To Enjoy Your Job and the basic ways of marketing.
She once tried to do the full-time author route and take an extended period of time off in order to write “The Great American (Australian?) Novel,” and tried signing on with traditional publishers, but it didn’t pan out.
Intrigued with the rise of digital publishing, print-on-demand, and using social media as a marketing platform, she started a blog and podcast called The Creative Penn. Joanna immersed herself in everything going on in the industry, and became a trusted source for information, while also interviewing dozens of authors.
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Jim gives his observations from the NY Auto Show. Is the industry advancing, or is it all just marketing bling?
Download the podcast from iTunes, or play it below:
Episode #150! Thanks to everyone that has read the blog and listened to the podcast over the years.
It seems things have come full circle… In Episode #1 of the Hopkinson Report podcast, I compared the iPhone to a Porsche, and asked, “Has the iPhone reached ‘no substitute’ status?”
Well, the iPhone is still going strong, with Apple on track to make $100 billion dollars in 2011. It sold 18.65 million iPhones in the quarter, an eye-popping 113 percent increase over last year, destroying Wall Street’s consensus estimate of 16.6 million units.
As for Porsche, I get to them a little later.

When I talk about marketing cars, I think the interesting thing is that companies have to market them all the time. A user might buy a car only once every 3, 5, or even 10 years, so car companies have to be building this brand and trust constantly.
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This week I interview entrepreneur John Murch and his motto, JFDI.
Download the podcast from iTunes, or play it below:
John Murch is a good friend and well, a lot like me. He’s a geek at heart, a fellow Computer Science major, and his interests include SEO, entrepreneurship, Tim Ferriss, cars, the iPad, SXSW, and helping others with their projects.
We co-founded a meetup group called NYC Masterminds to bring together people in the world of design, social media, internet marketing, programming, and app development, and well, if we could just find some more time away from working on our projects, we’d host more meetings.
The intention of our meetup group was to help people find and develop side projects and get them off the ground.
For me, it was my salary negotiation class, which eventually became an eBook, and then was picked up by a mainstream publisher (Salary Tutor goes live on Amazon on April 1, 2011!).
John has a very different and unique product: uBlanket, a site that allows you to take your old favorite t-shirts and convert them into the ultimate curl-up-on-your-couch-and-watch-The-Dark-Night blanket.
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