Moving across the country and Mashable have killed my blogging on BenParr.com, but still thousands of people are reading my posts. So, with my change of location, I thought I’d throw in a change of design.

So welcome to the new BenParr.com, the beginnings of a more social, more interactive BenParr.com. The old design has been thrown out the window for this one.

Some of the new updates:

• A completely new design: Thanks to a combination of my work and One Theme, I have a a new design. I have a new logo, new color scheme and a lot more space for widgets.
• Faster website: This should deal with any load speed bugs of the past.
• Navigation changes: You’ll notice that there is a new menu line – this is a quick nav to the topics I cover the most. On top of this, the menu is now on the right hand side, so that content is king. I also have two sidebars for more useful content.

Some of the things you can expect on this new website:

• Integration with my Mashable Articles: There will be a cool widget with my most recent articles so that you can always see what I’m writing.
• Integration with Tech&Beer and Engage Analytics: My two new projects are my tech show, Tech&Beer (more announcements soon, and my consulting firm Engage Analytics – updates from each will be pushed to BenParr.com
• Social media streams: Since I can’t write as much (I will still write), I will help compensate by connecting to my social stream – my Google Reader shared items, my Twitter, my Facebook stream, and more will appear on the blog so you’re in the know about the best social media and entrepreneurship information.

What still has to be done:

• Fixing bugs: The comments don’t appear in titles and there may be some IE6 issues.
• Design tweaks: A slightly bigger font here, a slight color change there – nothing too revolutionary.
• Old article formats: Some of the older articles didn’t take perfectly to the new design. I will deal with them as necessary.

Watch out for more changes and updates. In the meantime, please give me some feedback on what I should do next.

- Ben

What a simple question, but one we don’t ask enough.

As you know, I have an entrepreneurial bent, so I love to figure out ways to solve problems, and then implement those solutions. But first, you’ve got to pick a problem out, one that bothers you.

I put the question to the Hacker News Community, and the response was immense: 183 replies, all of them either problems entrepreneurial developers wanted to see solved or comments on those problems. Here were the top ideas, scored by the Hacker News community:

IE6, for those of you who are not programmers or designers, is the bane of our existence. Rewriting CSS that works in Firefox, Safari, and IE7, but then breaks in IE6 is one of the most frustrating experiences possible. I’m certain that IE6 wastes millions of dollars each year in wasted manpower and design flaws. No, it’s not global warming, but it’s still a problem that causes massive inefficiency and stifles innovation.

A larger problem that millions of people are already trying to solve. But one I don’t think we’ll be solving before I’m in the grave.
(more…)

I’m about to venture into somewhat treacherous waters, so feel free to yell and rant at me in the comments if you feel the need. But I am of a strong belief on this one, so I wanted to discuss it. I think you can guess the issue I’m going to talk about from the title.

If you’re a tech-oriented person like I am, you probably sit most of the day in a comfy computer chair with your giant two-screen setup with tons of code/docs on one screen and your web browser/IM/Skype on the other. At least, that’s how I am (it’s really quite efficient). But the point is that you’re sitting in a chair all day, instead of on your feet and using your body. Especially when there’s major projects due, new features to launch, or staring a new job, you put workouts and proper diet on the backburner to get things done.

And so the cycle of bad health begins.

As millions of people can probably tell you, skipping proper workouts and not getting balanced meals becomes a habit once you start. And restarting the good habits is tough as hell. The New Years Resolution phenomenon still astounds me. A week after New Years, tons of new people with sweatbands in the gym. Two weeks later, 90% of them never return to the gym.

Why do I bring this up? I can’t stress enough the impact of your physical health on your ability to be a productive entrepreneur. Especially when you are the head of your own company seeking venture capital, your health and appearance are important factors in how people judge you and how you get things done.

Just a few key points you probably already know, I but cannot stress enough:

1) Your physical health affects your mental sharpness.
This article on LiveScience provides a great overview of studies that show a huge link between exercise, proper diet, good health, and a healthier brain. Physical exercise is still mental exercise for the brain. Eating good food is going to send nutrients toward the brain. Bad food is going to starve the brain of those same nutrients.

It’s simple why the correlation exists – the brain is part of the body. You can’t fix a watch without fixing ALL of its parts, and you can’t keep a body healthy by exercising only one part of it. Programming does not count as a cardio exercise, sorry.

The opinions and impressions people have of you are always going to be shaped by your appearance
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell is a great book on this subject. It’s sad but true: the taller and thinner you are, the more promotions and money you can expect to make. Most people don’t do it on purpose, but if there’s two people with exactly the same proposal, who are they going to favor? Yes, the more attractive one. So do yourself a favor and make sure that you can win that tiebreaker.

Bad health decreases your bottom line and investment capability

There’s a reason health insurance is so expensive – health care for an ailing body is expensive. You’re spending less on your new idea and more on your new pain medication. See where the money is going?

Persistent confidence is a major key to successful entrepreneurship

Not just confidence, but confidence that can take a beating. Your idea is going to be berated, judged, shot down, burned, and insulted over and over again as an entrepreneur. If your confidence cannot take that beating, your’e in the wrong arena. There’s a direct link between your looks, your health, and your confidence. If you’re already in self-doubt because of your body image, your confidence may not be able to hold under the entrepreneurial pressure.

The issue of health for entrepreneurs is a personal one for me. A year and a half ago, June 2007, I weighed over 200 pounds. While not a fat kid, I was chubby and round. During that summer, I committed to putting off the weight and getting in shape for my health, my self-confidence, and the satisfaction of proving I could actually do it. By August, I was in the 170s. Today, I range in the low 160s with a toned and balanced body and a great deal of added confidence. It’s also proven to me that I can get things done once I’m in the mindset.

I know that a lot of people have genetics that hurt their health and their bodies, and little can be done about it. But that’s different than not actively trying to eat healthy and not putting in periodic work-outs. A good workout or two a week or replacing that damn soda with a glass of water and a cup of raspberries does wonders for your life. When you’re consistently working on improving your health, you can feel the results, even if the results aren’t immediately apparent at the waistline.

So if you’re an entrepreneur or if you just want to better your life, do yourself a favor and do the little things to improve your health. All I ask is for you to not ignore the connection between physical health and your productivity and mental health.

Here’s a random assortment of health articles to get your started:

• 7 Fail-proof Ways to Rev Up Your Fat Burning and Get Lean
• Stop the Laziness! 6 Simple Ways to Start Exercising Today
• Weight Loss for Back Pain Relief
• 15 Reasons Why You’re not Losing Weight

I love synergies in my products. I like it that I can take dates sent to my Gmail and copy them into my Google Calendar. This time, I want to tell you about a few of my favorite synergies with Remember the Milk, perhaps my favorite of all Internet Tools.

If you’re unfamiliar with Remember the Milk, check out the Internet Tools Wiki article on it. Or just know that it’s an online to-do and task management system.

Here’s a few of the many ways to improve your use of Remember the Milk via synergies:

• Gmail: Via a Firefox extension, you can install Remember the Milk into your Gmail. You visit your Gmail all the time, so it makes sense to put your calendar and to-do list system on the same platform. You can copy links from your Gmail into RtM, update tasks, or connect with your mail contacts.
• Jott: By far my favorite synergy with Remember the Milk. Call Jott, tell them you want to Jott to Remember the Milk, and then add a task by voice to your to-do list. You can even specify the time and date, and thus get a reminder without ever looking on a computer. A lifesaver, especially when you’re on the road.
• Twitter: If you are a big Twitter user, then this is for you. Send Twitter a direct message with your task and the time/date and it’ll appear in your RtM task list.
• Google Maps: It’s long been integrated with Remember the Milk. Add a location to your Remember the Milk and then you can use RtM to map out where you have to go during the day.
• Google Gears: Going to be in a place without Internet? Want to use Remember the Milk offline? Then just install Google Gears and you’ll be set!
• Google Calendar: Google Calendar and Remember the Milk have a lot of similarities, so it makes sense that they can work together. Send your RtM tasks into your Google Calendar so you can see everything in one interface.
• iPhone/iPod Touch: Warning: this service costs a little money, but is well worth it if you’re an iPhone user. You gain a very clean interface for adding and managing tasks while on-the-go
• Blackberry: Again, it costs money, but MilkSync is the Blackberry version of Remember the Milk and is worth every cent. Plus the people at RtM are awesome, and why wouldn’t you want to support them?

According to Wikipedia, a bliki is a combination of the features of a wiki and a blog (duh. Oh, more names for it from Wikipedia: wikiLog, wog, wikiWeblog, wikiblog, bloki). It posts like a blog, but all of the articles are editable.

So why do I care about this? Because I’m looking for something to help me combine wiki functionality into this website. But not in the way I just described to you above.

I’m interested in creating a system where the top portion of a page or post is like a normal blog article, but right under it is a “wiki” section which anybody can edit. So the top portion is what I or guest writers post, and then the section just below that is editable by anyone and uses Wikipedia/Mediawiki syntax. This section would be above the comments.

My rationale? Well, I’m not about to give all of that away, but let’s say that I think having a section where the collaborative knowledge of the readers and users of different blogs to create succinct additions to article could be very useful in a variety of ways.

Anyone know of anything similar to this, preferably in WordPress plugin form? Or is anyone interested in working with me to build it if it doesn’t exist?