No matter the industry, all creative professionals, and even the left-brained ones, need to look outside of our circles of influence for inspiration. By exploring new ideas, images, methodologies or concepts, we expand our minds and fuel our own creativity. This is how innovation happens, and how new products, business practices and ways of living help us grow as individuals and as a society.

Where do you look for creative inspiration? Here are some awesome locations around the Web where you can bask in the creativity of your fellow humans.

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Dear business owner,

We know vision, mission and value statements make you feel warm and fuzzy. They may even make a few of your keenest employees feel giddy. But inflicting them on your website visitors is cruel, and it’s time to put a stop this sleep-inducing torture.

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Where do common expressions in the English language come from?

Long before Internet memes and hashtags, there were spoken expressions that stood the test of time. Even the best copywriters fall victim to their seduction, citing writer’s block, lack of sleep or general laziness as culprits. Sadly, clichés, idioms and other common expressions often signify lack of creativity, which is not something any writer wants to portray.

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Recent redesign catastrophes have begged the question — how can Web-based businesses that want their brands to evolve avoid harsh backlashes and possible brand suicide?

Most would say the answer is simple — do it right and you won’t have a backlash, or at least you won’t have one you can’t recover from.

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While Webcopyplus made a holiday donation to Kiva last Christmas, I opted to make a personal donation to the World’s Worst Website Foundation (a subsidiary of the Human Fund). With help from passionate supporters like you, we can raise awareness about common website wreckers and how best to avoid them.

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On Saturday, Jan. 29, Sidetrek Productions presented a one-day conference in Vancouver on real world social media strategies and implementation. The speaker line-up included representatives from some of the biggest players in social media in Vancouver, the country and the world.

Following is our recap of the highlights.

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Webcopyplus recently discovered a website called The Noun Project, which describes itself as “a collection of highly recognizable symbols that form the world’s visual language.”  The Noun Project’s sleek symbol designs are licensed under public domain, meaning they’re free for anyone who wants to download them and use them in their own projects.

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One of our favourite sources for general hilarity and Web-related weirdness, Laughingsquid, posted Steve Jobs’ New Years Resolutions on a Starbucks Napkin, courtesy of the ‘unreal Apple news’ team over at Scoopertino.  If you think this is funny, check out some of Scoopertino’s other fake Apple news pieces, like Wikileaks Releases 140,000 Emails from Steve Jobs, and Apple Kool-Aid to Go Into Mass Distribution.

I guess we’re not the only ones who like to poke a little fun at Apple’s head brat.

Recently, 52 Weeks of UX posted an article that challenged a commonly held opinion regarding web content — that it should be as concise and simple as possible in order to appeal to the average web user, whose attention span online doesn’t often creep past a few seconds.  The popular theory goes, that if you don’t deliver the pertinent facts quickly, your website visitors will get frustrated and go elsewhere to find the information they desire.

In response to the point that web copy should be brief, the article’s author, Joshua Porter, stated: “There are several problems with this assumption, however. First, people do actually read on the Web…scanning is simply the first step in the process. Second, short text can be just as poorly written as long text (and often is). Third, people actually seek out and enjoy reading longer texts.“

Here are the author’s points supporting this statement, and our take:

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If you’re like me, you get irritated by overused headlines. Now that we’re entering ‘Best of 2010’ season, I’ve gone into hyper-eye-roll mode.

To help you waste your Internet time wisely, I’ve decided to be your ‘Best of 2010’ list curator. Of course, all of these are based around my penchant for web content, copywriting, web design, technology and marketing, and I rebelliously chose 9 instead of 10.

Here is my collection of the Best Best of 2010 Lists of 2010.

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