A list of my current 5 favorites.

bbpress. bbpress is a small forum platform from Automattic, the ones behind Wordpress. Although WP is great – I love it and use it every day - bbpress is near perfect to use as your platform for building your own sites that are not really blog-based. I know a lot of people use WP as a CMS as well but in that regard WP is sometimes a bit too much for my taste. bbpress is not. It gives you as a developer of sites all the base functions you need; user authentication, optimized db-connection handling, and a very simple architecture. Great!

Häagen-Dazs® Strawberry and Cream ice cream. I’m not an affiliate of Häagen-Dazs although sometime I wish that I was, since I can speak very candidly about how much I like their products. Some say Ben & Jerry’s got some good flavors. Where I live we get a lot of Italian ice cream now which is also great. But when I want really good ice cream I go for Häagen-Dazs straweberry and cream. If you haven’t tried it, you’re lucky; you have something to really look forward to.

Running. Bruce Lee once said “running is the king of exercises” and I just have to agree. Just so you get the right picture here: I’m not – NOT – an exercise kind of guy. I’m not even that into sports. I can stand watching the world cup in football and selected parts of the Olympic Games but that’s sort of it. Lately I’ve found that running is something that appeals to me. There are no pre-requisites, no special material needed (well, shoes but that’s sort of given). You just run, and feel like a king afterwards. So simple.

Abercrombie & Fitch. I’m not an affiliate of A&F either, but man do they have some really nice clothes. My girlfriend and I sent for a shipment from the US just the other week from what was our first “buying clothes online” experience. I buy a lot of things online but not clothes, for the usual reasons. This was the first exception to that rule and I couldn’t be happier. Their site is also one of a kind when it comes to clothes. If you visit it you’ll see what I’m talking about. Building a good clothes site is perhaps the most difficult thing you can do online, but they’ve succeeded. No bells, no whistles. Just a good way to view clothes. Kudos.

The Learning Curve. TLC is a blog by someone somewhere in California. I don’t know this guy but he’s about as cool as they come. I don’t think there’s a ton of followers to this particular blog yet but he’s got three things going for him; frank comments on today’s financial development, the ability to be brief and to the point, and eye catching photo’s as sort of a gimmick. I hope he keeps it up, so many financial blogs we’ve seen start out this way to somehow lose interest or go overboard e.g. option addict, slope of hope etc etc.