You Grow Girl – To me, gardening always seemed to be a field too complex to understand, let alone implement at home. My mother is an avid gardener who actually knows by heart the Latin taxonomy of many East Coast plants and trees., which kind of puts me to shame, but now with Weekly Blog winner You Grow Girl, all that is about to change!

This wonderful gardening community, created by Gayla Trail back in 2000, is a “contemporary, laid-back approach to organic gardening” you should definitely explore, particularly if your green patch is spatially-challenged (i.e. the size of a closet). Find lots of gardening ideas you can implement at home, including produce you can grow and eat! Here is a good example:

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.

Macheesmo – What happens when you take tested recipes, add clearly presented how-to instructions made easy, and throw in high resolution yummy photos? You get this Weekly Blog winner, Macheesmo, written and cooked up by food savvy Nick, who is eager to share his kitchen adventures. One thing Macheesmo helped me master in the kitchen is preparing home-made lasagna, which always seemed like a daunting task. Thanks, Nick! This was a real treat! Click the image below to get to the full post, and browse the huge collection of other recipes available on Macheesmo.

DailyFeats – A special website with an innovative approach to goal realization, DailyFeats is here to “guide you in doing small actions — or “feats” — that reflect your values and your life’s goals. Along the way, you’ll earn points, meet a helpful community, and save money on real-life expenses, motivating you to go do good — every day.”

The spectrum of the ‘Feats’ you can aim for is huge. Choose a goal related to your health, your sense of responsibility, your family, your knowledge and many other factors of your life. Once a goal category has been chosen, you are asked to pick what you’ve done to reach that goal, and depending on your answer, you earn points for the effort. Sign in via Facebook or register to receive the much needed support for reaching successful Feats, and to help others do the same. Want some inspiration? Check out the epic feats page. Here’s a recent one on that list:

True Life Costs – This amazingly designed and executed website by Volkswagen brings an entire town to life to teach us the concept of good value and expenses over time. Once you arrive in town you are invited to explore a variety of expense categories, including vacation, house, food, family, and of course, car -after all, it’s Volkswagen’s website and they do a terrific job at showing their cars’ good value.

Putting marketing agendas aside, the True Life Costs project is fun to explore, it’s beautifully designed and it does succeed to send the message of calculated spending.

All My Faves Russia – It took us a lot of work and research, but the Russian homepage we’ve been working on is now live! As with our other non-US homepages, the allmyfaves.ru serves as the ultimate homepage for Russian users, both domestic and international.

The page includes the most popular categories Russian users look for and visit on a daily basis. These include the obvious email, video, news and entertainment categories, but also interesting categories such as Books, Finance and Travel, just to name a few. All My Faves’ homepage for Russia marks a special milestone in our country-specific homepages list and we’re very pleased to be able to offer the best of the Web to the Russian community worldwide!

The startup Daily – Many entrepreneurs seek tips and advice from the books of experienced, successful CEOs who have alredy been there, done that. Knowledge is always one of the most powerful tools you can have before embarking on a business adventure, but reading books from start to finish can be time consuming. The Startup Daily is “a short daily email with the best tips, ideas, and advice from great books on entrepreneurship, business, marketing, management, etc.”

Get the gist of entrepreneurial wisdom with this laid-back, bite-size (yet dead-serious) email newsletter. You will find large doses of inspiration and great ideas. If a certain idea made you long for the book, you can always buy it and read it from cover to cover. As for my personal favorite idea, here it is: Stop Waiting for the Right Time, from Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky.

All My Faves NPO – We are excited to announce the launch of All My Faves’ brand new Non-Profit Organization page (NPO). There is nothing quite like it on the Web and our team of editors had painstakingly reviewed and filtered out the most reliable and effective NPOs out there to create this special page.

Carbonmade – Those of us working in the creative industries such as design, graphic design, styling, photography and other visual mediums will appreciate this free online portfolio service. As a visual professional, you need to provide solid work examples to lure more potential customers and to make a name for yourself. And what a better way to do so than by creating an online portfolio of your own, one that looks amazing and presents your chosen works in an easy, nice-to-look-at place. Carbonmade offers just that.

To get started, I suggest exploring some samples – my favorites are Bódis Árvai Tünde Photography and Bunny Pirates by the illustrator Meghan Stratman, respectively shown here below.

The free Carbonmade bundle allows a maximum upload of 35 images (which is more than enough for the average professional), and a paid track of $12 a month for those interested in showcasing photos, videos, flash projects and more, all ad-free. What are you waiting for? Sign up now!

Google Crisis Response – Google.org initiated this blessed project back in 2005 (following Hurricane Katrina) to help hard-hit locations worldwide cope with the aftermath of natural disasters by making relevant information readily available for everyone, everywhere.

The recent earthquake and consequent tsunami in Japan forced the island country to come to terms with its worst natural disaster on record. The Google Crisis Response project gives you all you could possibly need in one easy page; comprehensive coverage along with real-time updates and latest news on the sitatuion in Japan; direct donations to the Japanese Red Cross using Google Checkout; detailed maps of the affected area; emergency phone numbers; people finder; current status (transportation, government warnings, blackout info) and much more.

Google’s Crisis Response project makes helping out fast and easy. Just imagine how helpful this could have been back in 2005 when New Orleans was in dire need of fast assistance. Please visit this project and help where you can. You would appreciate the same, God forbid you should find yourself under the circumstances Northern Japan communities are currently dealing with.

phraseup – If writing is not something you find easy to do, phraseup is a tool you should consider. It is essentially a sentence completion service that comes to the rescue when you have only a fraction of a sentence ready in your head. How does it work? Simply type in your incomplete phrase or sentence and put (*) where you’re short on inspiration. Hit the Complete button and see the magic happen before your eyes. Here’s an example:

For those of you interested in how exactly phraseup manages to offer appropriate completions, here’s an explanation: “Using a patent pending algorithm, phraseup* assists you with writing, by suggesting possible combinations to fill-in the words you can’t remember. Each suggestion is accompanied by definitions, synonyms and translations to other languages.” What an innovative concept! Writing just got a bit easier.

Sockroll – RSS. We all have it and read its feeds on a daily basis. Readers are great in terms of keeping us up to date on the latest posts and news from our favorite sites and blogs. But there’s no escape from telling the truth; most readers give a one-liner and stick to it, often at the expense of a fluid read. Sockroll counterattacks this issue, and I’m seriously considering ditching my Google Reader for good.

Presented in a newspaper-like layout, Sockroll offers a designated page for each of its categories (over 60 categories to choose from, including some non-mainstream ones such as Guy News, Programming, Religion, Weddings and loads more), listing posts in the order of publication time (most recent on top), and always including a visual item to accompany the post. Look for instance what Sockroll’s Fashion page looks like:

Another cool aspect of Sockroll is the interface’s appearance when reading a specific post. A semi-separate window opens up, showing you the full post in its respective site/blog page while keeping the Sockroll’s category page in the background. You can quickly close this window once you’re done and then go back to your main Sockroll page for more reads. Here’s what reading an Apartment Therapy post on Sockroll (on Home Design) looks like:

The end result is a pleasantly looking platform offering fluid reads and flexible skipping between topics. Plus, Sockroll takes the RSS subscription burden off of you and centralizes all the hot news of your chosen category in one place.