It's time for a blog roll!

For those of you who don't know what a blog-roll is, it's a "..collection of links to other weblogs".

These are the blogs that I read daily and have inspired me to start my own blog. If you haven't checked any of them out before, then give them a try. You'll end up adding them to your RSS feed. I (almost) guarantee it.

Please note, there is no particular order here. Check them all out.

Seth Godin (http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog) - Seth is the best-selling writer of books such as "Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable".  His blog is updated regularly (at least once a day during the week, often times more) . The best bit of this blog is the way he presents new ideas (often to do with marketing), but rather than giving you the full idea he'll give you 99% and let you figure out the rest for yourself. While this sounds annoying it's not. By leaving out the 1% he forces you to think it through yourself. This not only makes you feel as if the idea is yours (you figured out the 1% he didn't!) it also helps to reinforce the idea in your head. If you've never read a marketing blog before, this is the place to start. I got his book Small Is the New Big: and 183 Other Riffs, Rants, and Remarkable Business Ideas from my Aunt and Uncle for Christmas and since then i've read his whole back catalogue of blog posts and all his books.

A VC - Fred (http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/) - This is the first blog I ever read by somebody in the VC (venture capital) industry. While Fred is in one of the most interesting industries in the world, he rarely blogs about it. Thankfully his taste in music more than makes up for it, his play list often reads something like this; The Shins, Arcade Fire and Modest Mouse. While our music tastes are extremely similar (those are some of my favorite bands at the moment), he has a lot of interesting things to say; About the VC community, VC itself and even products/services he has invested in. (Don't worry, he is very clear when he has a vested interest in something). He also has a knack of posting things which I've been looking for. An example of this was a video explanation of what RSS is. If you're not in the know go watch this video at Fred's site. Once you've watched that, see if you can subscribe to my RSS feed. (Yay, my first shameless self promotion, I am so proud.)

ProBlogger Blog Tips (http://www.problogger.net/) - Darren Rowse - This blog is all about how to make your blog better and how to monetize it. With other 19,000 RSS subscribers, I am thinking this guy knows what he is talking about. His subscriber base really helps Darren, because of it he can post about new technology (or old) and undoubtedly one of his readers will have used the product/service and will be able to provide some statistics for you. He also road tests a lot of the products/services himself then invites readers to compare results. But the site isn't solely concerned about making money, it's about making your blog better for readers (which in the end will increase your ad revenue, so I guess it is all about the money.) I've gotten a lot of my ideas from him and look forward to testing out more of what he has to say. If you are thinking about starting a blog yourself (you should), check it out.

Guy Kawasaki - (http://blog.guykawasaki.com/) - Another blog by a VC. He probably posts less about VC than Fred, but he is my go-to guy when I want a book to read. He recommended 'Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days" and it's by far the best book I've read all year. Buy it, borrow it, steal it (don't steal it, stealing is bad.) do whatever you have to do to get a copy of this book. Without Guy I wouldn't have read that book, so he is the man. When he does post about VC, he does an awesome job of it. Check out this and this to see what I am talking about. Also if you don't know how to give a proper power point presentation read this (I am talking to you, lecturer from economics of the internet, size 6 font isn't cool.)

Last but not least: 

ViolentAcres (http://www.violentacres.com/) - Completely different to everything else I've posted about. This site is kind of like maddox. Except that it's from a woman's point of view. It's like she's constantly  PMSing and in heat, thats the only way I can describe it. While you might question the education value of this blog, there is some it's just...sparse. For example this  post about the customer not always being right made me really think about the value and importance we put on the customer and not on our own staff.

Thanks for reading my first post, feel free to add your own blog roll in the comments and I'll be sure to check them out. Sorry for the link overload as well, sometimes I go into a link frenzy. Thanks to typepad for making this whole process extremely easy. You can get a 30-day trial with them at typepad.com and then pay as little as $5 a month.