My 10 Favorite Blogs

Mashable has asked around the blog world, on the alleged 10th birthday of blogging, what are your ten favorite blogs?

I have at the moment 114 feeds that I actively read on in my RSS aggregator (aka bloglines). The ten that I just couldn’t live without are as follows (in no particular order):

What Is A “Fair Price” For Freelance Web Design and Development?

I was browsing through some bid requests a few weeks ago and noticed several common threads among postings. Clients want you to work as hard as you can as fast as you can for as cheap as they can get away with. For example, one request asked for TWO sites to be designed and coded and to be powered by CMS backends, but the budget was no more than $450…

I can totally respect budgets, but what about $450 for two complete sites design to code to CMS is fair? That barely covers the cost of the design for both sites, let alone the coding and implementation into a CMS! It certainly isn’t fair to any coder in the USA that would (desperately) take on that job.

A quote from another request:

I’m looking to have this done as inexpensively as possible (duh!)

MySims

Yes, I am a huge geek and JUST saw Nintendo and EA are releasing a news Sims line - MySims (thanks StumbleUpon!!).

The trailer:

Slated for a Fall 2007 release. I’m still Wii-less, but I will definitely try to get a hold of a DS version!!

From the MySims.com website:

Explore a whole new world with MySims™—it’s your world to transform! Move to a town that has been struggling lately. With a little creativity and some help from the locals, you can make this place thrive. Improve the town to attract new characters, from the Italian Chef and Florist to the Kickboxing Instructor and DJ. Discover what the residents want and need, so that you can help them enjoy life in their town.

Pet Peeve: “Forcing” Invites When Joining a Social Network

I just joined Shelfari “an interactive social media site for book lovers. Using Shelfari, you can create a personal shelf of your books, see what your friends are reading, get and give recommendations for what to read next, create book lists, and even share your opinion on a book with friends or the growing Shelfari community.” And I am super super excited about it being an avid reader and always looking to find new books to read and finding new books through the recommendations of others.

I worked at a library for nearly 3/4 years and consistently stole their Publisher’s Weekly and Book Review Digest to find the newest and most interesting books, so finding an online network where I can read the reviews of others and post my own is exciting.

Except for one thing.

Colourlover’s Finally Comments on Adobe’s kuler

Colourlovers has finally commented on Adobe’s kuler nearly 8 months since it’s launch. I’ve long used colourlovers as inspiration for new color schemes when I hit a color-block. Colourlovers first launched in 2004 building and strong community following and adding more and more neat features as time passed. Adobe’s kuler launched November of 2006 offering another fantastic resource for those looking for color inspiration. The argument here though isn’t who does it best, or who has the coolest features (each site wins different rounds in that aspect) - it’s the fact that Adobe has clearly borrowed their kuler site idea from colourlovers and despite being contacted by the owner of colurlovers has made no attempt to remedy the situation.