Category Archives: Projects

Updates on projects I’m working on

My Column Is Heading to CNET!

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Ben Parr| 13 Comments

Dear friends, colleagues and supporters,

I’m thrilled to announce that I’m joining CNET and CBS Interactive as a contributing columnist and commentator!

Ever since my departure from Mashable, I’ve posted my personal take on the big technology news of the day on BenParr.com. The response to my work has been overwhelming, and traffic to this blog has skyrocketed. Thank you all for reading, commenting and sharing.

But now I have a chance to make a much bigger impact with my writing. Starting this week, my commentary on technology, social media and startups will appear on CNET several times per week. I will not be doing any straight reporting — CNET has a talented team that already does an amazing job at that. Instead, I will be doing what I’ve been doing here on BenParr.com: breaking down the big issues and players in tech and explaining what it actually means for both the tech industry and society as a whole.

To do that, I will be writing a combination of thought pieces, analysis stories, response pieces and the occasional long-form column. My CNET column is called The Social Analyst, just like my column on Mashable. It’s going to have more bite than my old column, though. I intend to keep tech’s biggest names honest.

I decided to join forces with CNET/CBSi because CBS Interactive CEO Jim Lanzone and CNET General Manager Mark Larkin have an ambitious vision for the future.

CNET is huge: it is one of the 100 most visited websites in the world, but Mark and Jim are not content with resting on their laurels. I believe in their vision and their leadership, and I am thrilled to be working with them.

CNET isn’t my only gig, though. For the last few months, I’ve also been working behind-the-scenes on a startup, which we can’t wait to talk more about! My co-founder and I have a clear vision, as well as a duty to our investors, and we will move heaven and earth (and forgo sleep) to make sure our company succeeds.

My new role at CNET and CBSi is the best of both worlds. I get to reach millions of people with my thoughts on technology, but still retain the flexibility to be an entrepreneur, build amazing products and change the world.

Don’t take your eyes off of CNET. Big things are happening over there, and you won’t want to miss all the action. 2012 is going to be an amazing year.

Cheers,
~ Ben

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Posted in Announcements, Business, Entrepreneurship, Media, My musings, Projects, Social Media, Tech

The Rise of the Smart Assistant

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Ben Parr| 2 Comments

Almost everybody wants to have an assistant, even if people won’t freely admit it. Who doesn’t want an extra set of hands to help out with chores, scheduling, reminders, meetings, reservations, and the myriad of other tasks that we need to complete every single day?

Just a few years ago, the only way you could get yourself an assistant was to pay one a full-time salary. Very few people can afford the luxury having somebody help them with all of the tasks and information in their lives. But that has rapidly changed with new technology that makes it easier to outsource our lives.

This is what I call “Smart Assistant” technology, and I group it into three distinct buckets:

  1. Technological Assistants: The best known of these is Apple’s Siri, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Evi, for example, is far better at searching for relevant information on-the-fly.
  2. Virtual Assistants: Virtual assistants have been around for a while, but now they’re far more affordable thanks to services like Zirtual (which I use and love) and FancyHands. Rather than paying somebody $50K a year, you can pay $50 to $200 a month and get almost all the same benefits.
  3. Task Outsourcing: I’m a huge fan of services like Taskrabbit and Zaarly, which lets you outsource chores like food delivery, IKEA furniture assembly, laundry and grocery shopping. The convenience is worth the price.

While each bucket is vastly different, they help accomplish the same things — they help people save time, and they help put people’s minds at ease.

We’re only at the beginning of this phenomenon though. I believe it’s especially true for technological assistants, which are in the best position to deal with (but have yet to solve) one of the biggest problems of the Internet age: cognitive and information overload.

Smart assistants are huge businesses. Five years from now, you’re going to wonder how you lived without them.

Siri image courtesy of Flickr, Kaptain Kobold

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Posted in Business, Entrepreneurship, My musings, Projects, Synergies, Tech

Matt Schlicht Explains Tracks.By

Posted on September 20, 2011 by Ben Parr| Leave a comment

In this video, Matt Schlicht, aka one of the best product managers I have ever met, pitches his newest startup, Tracks.by, which he describes as “the most viral way for artists to promote their music and videos.”

Matt was the first product manager at Ustream, where he built a lot of the company’s viral products, including its Social Stream product.

This speech took place at the most recent San Francisco MusicTech Summit.

Disclosure: I sit on Tracks.by’s board of advisers.

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Posted in Projects

Jumping Out of a Plane for Charity

Posted on September 1, 2010 by Ben Parr| Leave a comment

I’m late adding this to my blog, but I still want to note it.

Two weeks ago, I agreed to help out the Leap for Life campaign to raise money and awareness for cancer research. To do this though, I did something I have never done before; I jumped out of a plane.

You can read all about the project here, but suffice it to say, the result was this:

I’m thrilled to have been a part of this experience and this worthy cause. Thanks especially to JoJo Wright and his team for letting me join on this crazy adventure.

I have more planned on the charity front. Stay tuned.

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Posted in My musings, Projects

BenParr.com – The Redesign!

Posted on April 27, 2009 by Ben Parr| Leave a comment

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

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Posted in Announcements, My musings, Projects, Synergies

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Moving to San Fran: Tweeting the Cross-Country Photostream

Posted on April 9, 2009 by Ben Parr| Leave a comment

Hey everyone, it’s been a busy couple of weeks, thus my updates have been even less frequent than usual. Normally I like to make my blog more about how to make you more productive as an entrepreneur and as a person. I promise I will get back to writing great posts on entrepreneurship soon.

In the meantime, I want to tell you about upcoming changes and the Twitter photostream experiment I will be conducting while I travel from Chicago to San Francisco, starting next Monday (April 13th).

First, on the changes – I intend to completely redesign BenParr.com with a new interface. It will be a completely new scheme that switches the location of the menu and adds some integrated functionality, such as a widget that streams the articles I write for Mashable and integration with my new tech show Tech & Beer, which should be launching in May. There will also be some integration with my new consulting firm, Engage Analytics, which is nearly done as a website and as a company.

The second piece of interesting news is the cross country move. It’s going to be a grueling, wonderful 4 day journey spanning over 2,000 miles. I will be driving in my truck with a uHaul trailer hitched to the back. But if pictures interest you, I will be taking pictures across the country, in every state and cool place I visit. I will chronicle packing things up, visiting my hometown, my dogs, and the major sightseeing points – the Rocky Mountains, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, and yes, even Nebraska’s corn.

The picture above is the boxes being packed. I will be posting all of my photos via Twitter, but I will be re-linking my Facebook status to my Twitter account, so all of those pictures will be posted on my Facebook as well. Be sure to follow my Twitter if you want to see half the country in the span of 3 days.

Those are my announcements. Oh yeah, I’m going to embed a widget tomorrow to stream all of the photos from my TwitPic account so you can see the moving images. Hopefully this will be a good experiment in social media’s ability to share photos and experiences.

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Posted in Announcements, My musings, Projects

Announcements: Mashable, Tech&Beer, and Moving to the San Francisco Bay

Posted on March 31, 2009 by Ben Parr| Leave a comment

I have several major announcements to make, many of which you have seen if you’ve been following my Facebook or my Twitter stream.



1. I have left Spine-health:

If you did not know, I was the Interactive Content Manager for Spine-health, the web’s leading patient resource on back pain and chronic pain. I did everything from SEO (search engine optimization) to usability to adding new doctor-written content to the website.

I have nothing but the most profound respect for Stephanie Burke, Sylvia Marten, and the Spine-health team. However, I decided it was time for some changes in my life. It has been a great learning experience, and I am glad to have left on great terms.



2. I am now Associate Editor at Mashable:

I have been an occasional writer for Mashable since August 2008. But perhaps you’ve noticed a recent influx of articles from me in March, especially on weekends. Well that’s because I was training for a new role, as associate editor at Mashable. Mashable, for those who do not know, is a leading news and resource blog on social media and web technology. Now I get to talk about, debate, and discuss social media like Twitter, Facebook, iPhone applications, and more.

I can’t wait to discuss social media with the world! Interested in my writing? You can always find my work at my Mashable Author Page.



3. I have started an analytics and consulting firm:

Mashable won’t be my only job. I have opened up a consulting firm, Engage Analytics, which will provide strategic and consulting services in three specific areas:

  • Website Optimization and Usability
  • Web Analytics
  • Web and Social Media Marketing

For more details (and a rough look at the still-being-built website, visit here.



4. I am co-hosting Tech&Beer, a live tech entertainment show:

In the next month, Matt Schlicht and I will be launching Tech&Beer, a twice-weekly live tech entertainment show. On the show, Matt and I will bring aboard tech personalities, entrepreneurs, and celebrities as co-hosts. We will interview them and discuss the week’s major technology-related events with them. We will use audience questions and topics to fuel the show. And as the title may indicate, we will drink beer and have a little fun as well!

Each episode will air live on Ustream.tv as well as be recorded via Vimeo. If you’re interested in the show (either as a co-host, sponsor, or interested fan), be sure to email Mazy Kazerooni, our producer, at mazy[at]techandbeer.com.

Also, follow the Techandbeer Twitter account.



5. I am moving to Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay:

The final announcement, and perhaps the most significant, is that I am relocating from Chicagoland to the heart of Silicon Valley. I’ve lived in Illinois my entire life, with brief stints in Santa Barbara, Croatia, D.C., and Thailand. Chicago has been great, but I need a chance of scenery.

The Tech&Beer show will be broadcast from Mountain View, CA, and I will be covering stories for Mashable from the silicon technology hub. I leave for San Fran/the valley on April 13th.



I will have more to announce and discuss in the next few weeks, but wanted to let you all know now. . Thanks for your support. I’ll try to post more about all of this soon.

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Posted in Announcements, Entrepreneurship, Projects, Social Media

It's Official: My Novel's Done

Posted on January 24, 2009 by Ben Parr| 6 Comments

I’ll have more to report as I try to take this moment in, but I completed my first novel, a science-fiction thriller, at about 11:00.

Although the story’s done, I still have a lot of work to do. I’m going to take a break from it, read some fiction for fun, and then get this thing printed and do my edits. After that, I’ll be asking some close friends to read it as well and we’ll find out if it’s up to par.

In the meantime, here’s some statistics (as of 1/24/2009):

  • 44 Chapters, 3 Parts
  • 132,109 words
  • 528 Pages in Microsoft Word (double spaced)
  • 4 Years, 3 months to completion (though I don’t think any future novel will take this long again. After all, this is the first of a five-book arc)

I’m finally done. Wow.

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Posted in Announcements, Projects

New Section of BenParr.com – Introducing the Internet Tools Wiki

Posted on June 12, 2008 by Ben Parr| 1 Comment



For the last few days, I’ve been working on some design and functionality features of BenParr.com. I’m nowhere near done, but I’m ready to release a new section of BenParr.com: The Internet Tools Wiki

The Internet Tools Wiki is a project designed to aggregate the most useful information on the internet regarding internet tools and social media. What does that mean? It means that, unlike Crunchbase or Wikipedia, which are focused on general, non-biased information about companies and products, the Internet Tools Wiki is chiefly concerned with effective utilization of these products and aggregates the most impressive articles and community knowledge to that end. In the next few weeks and months, you can expect blog articles to coincide with wiki articles, for articles across the net to be added to the Internet Tools Wiki Database, and for more and more tools to be added over time.

The information you will find on most of the wiki pages:

  • A Brief Description of the internet tool, no more than two sentences
  • A Value Proposition explaining why you should use the tool, no more than two sentences
  • BenParr.com Articles, an aggregate of all relevant articles on improving your use of an Internet tool from the BenParr.com blog
  • Other Featured Articles, a collection of articles from myself and the community on how to best utilize each Internet tool.
  • Community Advice, the section where users can place their tips, tricks, and information on how to best utilize Internet tools.

The wiki is currently bare bones and does not have proper information for most internet tools – That will come with time. Instead, functionality and information will be gradually added as articles are written and found.

Everyone is welcome to contribute to the wiki and to add their tips and information . You are also welcome to add new tools and new articles.

Expect more integration between the blog and the wiki as time goes on and my coding skills improve. In the meantime, I hope you get some utility and usefulness out of the Internet Tools Wiki!

- Ben

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Posted in Announcements, Productivity, Projects

Announcing FriendQuilts: A dynamic way to share (and show off) videos and photos on Facebook!

Posted on May 12, 2008 by Ben Parr| Leave a comment

Today is the official launch of FriendQuilts, a dynamic, useful, and incredible Facebook application that I firmly believe improves the usefulness of Facebook and will catch fire with Facebook users.

Okay, so I’m biased because I’m part of the project. Sue me after you’ve visited the app.












We would like to invite you to participate in the launch of Free Lunch and Sociable Apps newest facebook application, FriendQuilts. This unique online application let’s you show off your digital photos and videos in an exciting and interactive way!

Don’t want to deal with having to upload your stuff? We automatically support Facebook photos, web images, and Youtube videos. Check out some of the screen shots below for details.


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No registration is required to view and interact with quilts. Customization is simple and easy.






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Share photo albums around events. Invite your friends to fill in your empty patches. Zoom in to view and play videos at a larger size.



FAQ:

“How much does this cost?”

  • FriendQuilts is entirely free.

“What if I don’t have a facebook account?”

  • No problem, you can still view and interact with quilts anytime you see them. Although you can always sign up for a facebook account here.

“What about privacy?”

  • We provide a variety of privacy settings to meet all needs. Quilts can vary from “Invite Only” to “Public” with the click of a button.


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Posted in Projects

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