Rare Bird Finds is great example of effective simplicity. Started up by a couple of women, Mei-Lynn Destouche and Sharla Oliveri (who both have online businesses selling charming objects), Rare Bird Finds is a group blog of cool things you can buy online. 

The blog itself is very simple 3 column layout with an image banner. Most of the blog posts consist of one bright picture of a cool quirky delightful thing, a short description and a link to buy it. It’s not over complicated. 

On Fridays, there’s a Fab Five which is a great twist on an interview - someone interesting creates 5 posts, each with some cool thing you can buy online according to a theme that’s relevant to them.

Another cute feature is the RBF APPROVED reviews - these are for products that they have tested in real life and genuinely love. They’ve even created a logo for their stamp of approval.

It’s not a surprise then to find out that they have over 2000 daily readers, if you’re stumped for an original Christmas present then check out the blog, you may just find something…

Food blogs have made up a considerable chunk of blogs ever since the early days of blogging. One only needs to have a look at how many cookbooks there are in any one bookstore to see how much people want to both write and read about food.

With so much competition in the area, you really have to offer something special to stand out. Ideas in Food has just that very uniqueness to do so.

Aki Kamozawa and H. Alexander Talbot are two very talented chefs who run a consulting business in New York. But what makes them so special is that they are fascinated by the ideas of taste and the science of cooking. Most of their recipes are experiments designed to question and push the traditional boundaries we have in our cooking and eating.

Flavours from Prickly Pear to Yuzu to plain old Apple are explored. It’s not just exotic ingredients but new ways of cooking that are attempted. However, don’t think that all these ideas are unapproachable and not something that can be used in a non-chef’s kitchen - some ideas are just twisting around traditional recipes like steaming instead of baking brioche (a simple French bread) with the result a Chinese style “bao”. 

The blog is run from the TypePad platform with plenty of sidebar content modules used including photo albums for all their key ingredients.

And if you have the good fortune to be living in New York (or visiting) - they run private workshops and cooking classes.

The Happiness Project is such a wonderful idea for a blog - spend a year test-driving principles, tips, theories, scientific studies on how to be happier from Aristotle to Oprah and record the resulting insights on a blog. Fortunately, it’s not only a good idea - it’s well executed. The blog has been going since January and looks like making its target for a year of daily posts on happiness.

The blog’s writer Gretchen Rubin has a great personal story. She used to be a lawyer but she discovered that her true calling is writing and she now has four published books to her name (including Forty Ways to Look at JFK and Power Money Fame Sex: A User’s Guide). Through the blog, she has discovered that she is also a happiness evangelist and she encourages everyone to have their own Happiness Project. 

A great idea that we all can do for ourselves, is that she has spelt out her guiding forces:

Role models: Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Johnson
Mission: Be happier now.
Motto: Do good, feel good.
Symbol: Bluebird
Patron Saint: Saint Therese of Lisieux
The Two Splendid Truths:
1. To be happier, think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth. 
2. One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy. One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.

This information doesn’t need to be made public (that’s your choice!) but taped up somewhere you can see it from your work desk or first thing in the morning is a brilliant way of keeping on your path which is well known for making us feel happier.

The Happiness Project is on the TypePad platform and Gretchen has made good use of her sidebar to put lots of interesting content for her readers. In the sidebar, Gretchen includes her goals for each month and her twelve commandments (you can do the same using TypeLists in TypePad)

Another nice feature of the blog is that every Wednesday, she gives out a tip for happiness like 10 tips for being happier which includes this really counter-intuitive but completely accurate advice (if you want to read a whole book on this concept, have a look at Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less):

7. Don’t insist on the best.
There are two types of decision makers. Satisficers (yes, satisficers) make a decision once their criteria are met. When they find the hotel or the pasta sauce that has the qualities they want, they’re satisfied. Maximizers want to make the best possible decision. Even if they see a bicycle or a backpack that meets their requirements, they can’t make a decision until they’ve examined every option. Satisficers tend to be happier than maximizers. Maximizers expend more time and energy reaching decisions, and they’re often anxious about their choices. Sometimes good enough is good enough.

Another great post is Nine helpful yet REALISTIC tips, one favourite tip being:

9. Remember my Eighth Commandment and “Identify the problem.” This sounds so obvious, but it’s astonishingly helpful. For example, I like to work in coffee shops, and for years, and I mean years, I spent a lot of time running out of battery power and chasing around looking for someplace to plug in my laptop. Then I asked myself: “What’s the problem?” Answer: “I need more battery power.” Light dawned. I could buy an extra battery! I did, and it gave me a huge boost in productivity.

So check out the Happiness Project and make your day happier!

Seth Godin is one of the MEGA gurus of marketing. He has written a string of best selling books that have helped spread his maverick philosophies. 

If you haven’t yet read a Seth Godin book then you should pick one up quick smart. His books are easy reads with powerful insights and can really help you both understand and dominate your market.  Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us has just been released - but Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync? and All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World are good places to start. 

While waiting for your Amazon order to arrive ( ) - you can check out his blog which is powered by TypePad.

If you want to improve your online business, you’d do well to read Seth’s blog each day. He has such amazing creative energy - he usually posts everyday, is always writing books, and is just pure inspiration. He’s a great virtual mentor!

He’s great at handing out little golden thought nuggets that can reframe how you think about things like this post, Probably Not Stupid: 

Your difficult boss, customer, prospect, voter, student… probably not stupid, probably just uninformed. There’s a huge difference.

Every person makes decisions based on their worldview and the data at hand. If two people have the same worldview and the same data, they’ll make the same decision, every time (unless they’re stupid.)

…

In my experience, a closed-minded worldview (”I can’t read that book, I disagree with it”) is the most difficult hurdle to overcome. But a closed-minded worldview doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it means that you are selling yourself and your colleagues and your community short.

The easiest way to grow is to sell to people who share a worldview that endorses your position. The most effective way to grow bigger than that is to inform those that disagree with your position–more data in a palatable form. And, unfortunately, it turns out that the best way to change the world is to open the closed-minded.

One project that Seth inspired was Change This - it’s a series of downloadable manifestos and proposals about effecting change in your life and the world. Two of Seth’s manifestos on the site that are well worth reading are:

• The Bootstrapper’s Bible: “There’s never been a better time to start a business with no money. This manifesto will show you how.”
• Do Less: “for your company to do more, sometimes you need to do less! Stop trying to be all things to all people (or customers), and focus (in your life and in your work) on your core strengths. Your business (and probably your sanity) are likely to improve.”

The Daily Inspired is written by Antonio Lupetti from Rome, Italy. While its intended audience is web designers, there are plenty of design resources that are useful to anyone that has a website like these 10 Beautiful icons set for web developers and designers or these Free tools to create your own social network Facebook-like. 

As the name of the blog promises, there’s plenty of design inspiration such as this Creative way to present yourself in a 40 second long video.

Even if you don’t have the tools or the inclination to try out some of his tutorials like Design a nice pencil and handwritten style Woork like, it’s helpful to be exposed to these design principles and ideas to keep our perspectives broad.

The Daily Inspired is actually a Blogger blog with a custom theme even though it looks like a more advanced blogging system like WordPress. It goes to show you that Blogger is surprisingly flexible. Antonia has kindly let his readers download his custom theme but he warns that it is not for beginners and only for people who are relatively confident with HTML/CSS.