LearnVest – Did you ever take a personal finance class back in school or college? Neither did I, and quite frankly, it’s surprising it’s not a degree requirement in universities and colleges in America. Alexa von Tobel felt the same when she was a Harvard Senior. A few years and lots of research later, Alexa has created LearnVest, “an online platform to help women everywhere gain control of their finances.”

I have to admit, I had some problems with the fact that this site targets women and their implied inability to control their spending. Having that said, I do believe personal finance sites on the Web fail to address the special concerns and issues of women when it comes to staying on top of expenses. So, what’s so special about LearnVest? It’s a full blown wallet watcher if you please, that also offers regularly updated content on living richer and better.

Sign up with Facebook and start exploring LearnVest: there are bootcamp programs (many are free!) such as how to get out of debt, cut costs, build health and more. There is also the Money Tuneup which offers a comprehensive resource on investments, retirement, insurance and loans, and my favorite: Living Frugal which shows you how to spend sensibly on fashion and beauty, eating out and entertainment, even on styling your home.

In short, LearnVest is a blessing, and I’m already subscribed. Here’s a fascinating article I found on LearnVest and wanted to share: How to Splurge Right.

Architizer – This exquisite site offers a much anticipated meeting point for professional architects and companies of the industry, with prospect clients and other professionals. As the site explains, “one architectural project has dozens of contributors, from the intern who made the conceptual models to the construction administrator.” Architizer tries to bring all of them together.

Architizer offers different pages for projects, firms and people from all over the world, in addition to news, jobs and competitions. This is a terrific hub for all the various professionals working in the architecture industry, and I’m certain it also acts as a project facilitator in many ways. Great job Architizer! Here’s a project I wish I were the client of: Lefevre Beach House in Chile by Longhi Architects.

Neer – Location sharing is a popular mobile feature these days with Foursquare, GoWalla and Brightkite being some of the prominent location based apps. The problem with these however is that you let others -both friends and people you don’t know- know where you are and what you’re doing. Neer is another location sharing app that’s both productive and, for those who prefer it, private.

Neer is a clever application that connects family and friends based on shared location info, thus making social and family interaction more effective and fun. To start off, create your contact list of ‘cleared’ family members and friends. Next, add the locations you visit most frequently to Neer, and ask your friends to do the same. Neer will send you alerts of when, for example, your spouse has left the office, where they are on their way back home, even whether your kid is back home from school. These alerts are automatic and secure.

If you wish to make use of location-based tools without letting strangers in on where you are, Neer is the perfect app for you, your family and circle of friends. Works on the iPhone and Android. To learn more about Neer, here’s the intro video:

Storify – This unique site would not be the best choice for online privacy advocates, as it offers free sharing of stories “using social media such as Tweets, photos and videos.” This is possible via searching multiple social networks from one spot and then adding “individual elements into your story.” You can then embed your story in your site or blog.

A solid example is always the best way to see a site in action. Here’s the story Man tracks stolen laptop hundreds of miles away, calls thief:

280daily – What happened to those hand-written diaries we used to keep as kids growing up? I had three of those during my teenage years, but once I became an independent, grown woman, those diaries went straight to the attic. 280daily invites us to revisit the personal diary tradition by offering a free and private documenting service where each day you can use up to 280 characters to describe your day.

As a default, you will receive email reminders of your daily 280 character summary at 4 pm, but you can change this of course in your settings. Since 280daily is optimized to mobile device using this digital documenting service will be a breeze on the go as well. There’s also an import to PDF option if you wish to immortalize your entries… Here’s a video explaining the full features of 280daily.

BBC Earth: Life Is – The British Broadcast Company is famous for its nature documentary series and films, and we have all come to know Sir David Attenborough, the avid naturalist, acting as the engaging narrator of many of BBC’s nature productions. Now BBC Earth, with a huge repertoire of footage and content related to the natural environment and planet Earth, invites us all to explore our world like never before.

Explore nature in a totally new mesmerizing way, through images and videos of nature, filmed human stories, and see it all from the filmmakers’ point of view. To browse the vast world of content available on Life Is, click ‘search for more stuff’ which will bring you to this page (see below), where you can search by climate conditions, color, media type and more. Come and meet your planet right here on BBC Earth. You will be amazed!

IdeasWatch – For those of you who have experienced a moment of epiphany about a piece of technology, device or concept that is in need but not yet available, you will appreciate IdeasWatch. It’s the place for visionaries everywhere to pitch their startup idea, and where creative professionals can discuss these ideas with entrepreneurs and see if the idea can become a reality. Here’s a video explaining what IdeasWatch is about:

So what kind of innovative ideas will you find on IdeasWatch? Virtually everything, from every field. To start you can browse ideas (each can be voted for by Likes) or go straight to the most liked ideas. Here’s a popular one I found:

To submit your own idea, click on Share idea. I hope to see great things come out of this creative initiative by the community, for the community!

Nogeno – The team behind Nogeno has a calling. They want this website to serve as a home for the musicians who “need something personal – a page to call their own which will bring out their music, videos, upcoming gigs and much more.” Although there are many prominent sites for novel musicians (such as Bandcamp, MySpace and others), Nogeno’s added value comes in the form of lack of commercialization, or so its team claims.

To discover new artists that will suit your taste, you are invited to type in your favorite artist or band’s name in the homepage and the Nogeno system will automatically build a playlist made up of new emerging artists within the ballpark of your preferred genres. Musicians are also invited to create their own music space using Nogeno’s platform to increase their exposure.

Here’s the mixtape playlist Nogeno created for me, based on my submission of Arcade Fire and Modest Mouse, two bands I love to listen to. As you can see, the left part of the screen is the actual playlist, while the right part of that page is devoted to bio and background info regarding the artist/band playing.

A Google a Day – Google has done it again with this brilliant trivia game. To help its vast community of users in learning how to search better and faster, Google came up with A Google a Day, a daily trivia question for which the answer lies in the proper search, via Google search, naturally.

Each day a new question will be waiting for you, and it’s your job to go ahead and find the answer. Clciking “Answer” won’t give you the bottom line answer, but will rather give you clues of what to look for, and by the end of that process you will discover the answer yourself. Since this trivia game is both fun and didactic, it gets an A plus from me. Why don’t you challenge your friends to a Google duel? Should be fun and interesting!

Here’s an example of a question and the answer of Google a Day’s question from April 16.

Patch – This cool website seeks to keep you informed with what’s happening in your very own town. This extremely local news provider includes photos and videos of events taking place near you, keeps you updated on local businesses, it invites you to join discussions and even encourages you to submit your own announcements, photos and reviews. In this era of massive information consumption the local community often gets lost. Thanks to Patch, your own neighborhood becomes the center of attention.

Here’s what the Patch coverage looks like for Apple Valley, MN:

Per Square Mile – This unique blog -and a Weekly Blog champion- focuses on density. As blogger Tim De Chant explains, “It’s about what happens when people live like packed sardines. It’s also about what happens when people live so far apart they can go days without seeing another soul.”

Although Per Square Mile is not rich in photos or videos, its top quality textual content makes up for any visual downsides, and it really dives into the effect of density on people’s lives, for better or worse. An interesting post that will help you get into this blog’s mood is this one, discussing residential houses situated near train tracks. You can also click the image below to get to the full post.

TwistedSifter – Here’s a sweet website that will satisfy your crave for interesting and creative things online. TwistedSifter finds all the most popular stories, photos and posts currently on the Web, and the site’s use of large photos whenever possible makes it visually appealing as well.

TwistedSifter offers a variety of categories for you to explore. These include Picture of the Day, The Shirk Report (the funny side of the Web), Current Events, Galleries and more. In short, TwistedSifter truly offers a hot spot for interesting and creative content the Web has to offer. Click the image below to go to my favorite post.

Portrait of Muhammad Ali, created by Michael Kalish. Photograph by Jon David