Co. Design – This Fast Company creative project/magazine is loaded with inspiring ideas, beautyful design and superbly written content. According to its editor, Co. Design aims to “bridge the fuzzy border between design and business.” The Co. Design team believes a company’s most important employees are not the CEO, CFO or big shot directors, but rather the designers who design the company’s product, and this approach is pleasantly visible throughout the site.

This winner Weekly Blog offers my ideal kind of posts; large high quality images tastefully garnishing insightful content. To see an example, click the image below which is part of the slideshow post The Last Meals of Death Row Inmates, Beautifully Recreated (Slideshow).

Images by and courtesy of James Reynolds

The 2010 PNC Christmas Price Index – For 27 years now, PNC Bank has been keeping this wonderful tradition of tracking price fluctuations of the gifts mentioned in “The Twelve Days of Christmas” song. This year they’ve created an enchanting interactive website to visualize the 2010 data in comparison to the gifts’ prices in 2009.

See the price change of a partridge in a pear tree, two turtle doves, three French hens, four calling birds and so on, right up to the 12 drummers in 2010. The PNC Christmas Price Index site is so engaging, stunning and fun, learning about the percentages of increase or decrease in the prices of the gifts of Xmas is merely a secondary attraction. Enjoy this one.

Google Hotpot – If you’re already familiar with Foursquare, the Google Hotpot service offers the same underlining service concept -social networking with friends based on geo-location and business ratings- only it does it much, much better. Google has exceeded Foursquare’s service in every possible way, thanks to a large scale combination of the various Google tools; maps and street view, altitude, and search (including images, user reviews, related articles and loads more ) all come into play to offer an ultra geo-location service.

The end result is an all-you-could-possibly-need geo-location service, aimed mostly at the wine & dine aspect of entertainment (search restaurants, diners, cafes, etc.). You can see the screen shot below of the restaurant search I did, ending up with the Spotted Pig, a British restaurant in the West Village neighborhood of NYC. You will see how one page includes all the basic information (phone number, map and driving directions, menu), BUT there are also photos of the restaurant and its dishes (including a street-view), actual reviews of former guests of the restaurant, a list of related places and more formal, critic-based restaurant reviews.

I didn’t stop at the Hotpot’s eating-related business search and looked for cool museums to visit in San Francisco. Did Google Hotpot live up to my expectation? Oh yeah.

Just think of this service’s extreme usefulness in the mobile context. You could search for practically any kind of business or entertainment venue near you in real-time, in a matter of minutes, see what bistros your friends have been to and recommend others to visit as well, how to get there, even what to order. As expected, this is another phenomenal service by Google.

M Thru F – This hilarious blog was a Weekly Blog winner and thus scored the Weekly Fave spot last week. Prepare yourself for prolonged enjoyment as you explore the posts in this funny as hell work fail blog by Cheezburger. Turns out some of life’s funniest moments happen at the office, as you can see below.

Expensify – Owning a business is challenging in an of itself, but keeping a close eye over your company’s expenses is even harder. Expensify is here to treat many small businesses’ Achilles heel by offering a sophisticated yet easy to use expense management tool. It lets you “automate expense entry and recording by importing expenses, many with an eReceipt, directly from a credit card or bank account. Track mileage, log cash expenses and their receipts on the go with our mobile expense apps on the iPhone, Android, Palm Pre and BlackBerry phones or on the iPad.”

The Expensify system is so beautifully designed and executed, its complexity is left behind the scenes so you, the business owner, can have a seamless and super efficient expense management experience. Track your credit card expenses (the system is highly secured, so don’t worry about providing your credit card info), produce reports, allow other employees of your company to access the system, upload receipts, set up an expenses policy (for contractors, etc.) and connect to your QuickBooks/FreshBooks to sync expense accounts. You also have the option of customizing expense categories.

This huge bundle of goodness comes free -as part of the basic Google Marketplace app– and more active submitters are welcome to check the paid track (which is ridiculously cheap and totally worth it). If you are a small-medium business owner, Expensify is a must!

Rentalic – Now there’s finally a solution to all those unused household items and old appliances you keep stored away in your basement: rent them to people who need them. Sounds surreal? Just visit Rentalic and a whole new world of income and sharing opportunities will open up to you.

Rentalic’s basic concept is so simple and useful, it’s surprising no one had thought of it before. Rent out your bicycle for a week or rent someone’s 4-persons tent for your weekend camping with friends. All these and numerous other options are available to you on Rentalic, all with the added value of saving money, helping others and making the world a more sustainable place. Rentalic is the perfect rental marketplace! See the photo below as an example of what people from San Francisco are renting out.

VisualEconomics.com – Investments, loans, consumption expenditures and saving are financial terms we hear and read about everyday. But do we really understand what they mean? Excluding the professionals involved in the finance field, most laypersons often find it difficult to truly grasp the meaning behind published financial data, despite the increased accessibility we all have to related reports, numbers and information (thanks to the use of the Internet).

VisualEconomics is here to simplify our understanding of the financial market by offering down-to-earth content and explanations of some of the most complicated economic concepts and implications. Although VisualEconomics includes an abundance of break down information on various financial terms, it is their infographics section that truly makes them shine. Think of it as the cumbersome world of financial concepts, simplified. The infographic “How Much Americans Spend on Shopping” is but one example of the VisualEconomics magic. Enjoy and learn.

Mixergy – Created by the business master Andrew Warner, Mixergy is here to inspire ambitious entrepreneurs by providing a startup hub that is well-saturated with insightful and inspiring input of “experienced mentors.”  Andrew’s huge business success -during his 20s- and experience inspired him to establish an easily accessible place that introduces you “to doers and thinkers whose ideas and stories are so powerful that just hearing them will change you.”

By holding live speaker events and including online interviews with big entrepreneur names such as Timothy Ferris, Gary Vaynerchuck, Paul Graham and Jimmy Wales, the bubbly Mixergy is all about sharing ideas, success stories and entrepreneurial how-to’s.

For an example of the fascinating content you will find on Mixergy, see the inspiring conversation in the online interview of Intern Queen’s Lauren Berger, talking about how to reach 100+ press hits.

You’re the Boss – Small business are huge in America and a major issue in the US economy. Many former full time employees have decided to start a new career chapter in their life, being their own boss this time around. The NY Times’ blog You’re the Boss is here for all the small business owners out there, seeking relevant news, tips and tools to make their business stand out.

To start, I recommend reading the article on The Sweet Smell of Marketing Success by MP Mueller. Enjoy.