a lot of my time lately has spent thinking about how awesome these following sites/companies are. often, the only time organizations get any kind of review or mention is when people have a beef. so, i like to make an effort from time to time to shine a light on groups that are getting some good stuff done.

1. the behance network. twitter; @behance
if the behance network was useful before, it’s even better now that it has made some nice updates. among my favorites are;

• the ability to add folks to your inner circle OR follow them (twitter style). i don’t want to have everyone and their mom in my inner circle, but there are some killer designers out there that i want to keep tabs on.
• better compatibility with twitter. new projects can be automatically posted to twitter upon publishing
• overall more intuitive UI

2. cloud app. twitter; @getcloudapp
one of the most useful internet services i’ve come across in a while. it runs in the background on your mac. you can set it up to automatically upload screen shots when you create them. you can also push any file from you finder, any song from itunes or any photo from iphoto (as well as a few other things) simple by highlighting the item and executing a lickety-split keystroke. cloud app then automatically pastes a url for the file to your clipboard. it’s perfect for sharing concepts and revisions with collaborators and clients.

3. drop box. twitter; @dropbox
also a file sharing/collaboration service, but different from cloud app in some key ways. drop box is essentially on online file folder. the nice thing is that it looks and acts just like any folder in your finder would, but all the files are online. so, you can access them from anywhere, and that is handy-dandy if anything ever was. the free account is 2GB with paid accounts coming with more space. however, you can earn 250MB for each referral that opens an account (up to 3 extra GB. i’m at 4.5GB total).

4. mint.com. twitter; @mint
mint.com has single-handedly changed the way i think about finances. really, what good is all that pretty design that you make if you can’t seem to hang on the paycheck for more than a week? mint.com keeps you in check with budget planning tools, spending notifications and more.

5. ally bank. twitter; @allybank
probably the only bank i’ve ever really loved. ally has interest checking, no penalty CDs, reimburses all ATM fees that you incur (which was the deal maker for me) and is one of the few companies that uses the color purple well (no reference to the color purple of oprah winfrey fame).