Ever since I bought my first home, my mom has been politely goading me into letting her help spruce up the house with some plants. I’m black-thumbed, but she’s always been great around plants. Here are some of the things I’ve looked into doing:

• Paving the area on the side of the house and decorating it with outdoor planters. I’d love to use cacti but I don’t think our mailman would appreciate it.
• Putting another outddor planter or two on our back patio. There’s a dearth of color back there so I’d want it to be bright — oranges and reds, maybe?
• Inside we’ll have indoor planters with low-maintenance plants. Can I get away with putting cacti in every single indoor planter, even though we don’t live in the Southwest?

I’ve been browsing the online selection at EPlanters and getting a lot of fantastic ideas. I love that they show their planters actually being used; I really need a visual when it comes to making the most of the flowers and plants on our property, so it helps to see what looks good. I especially like the jazzy, modern-designed planters. Also, the colored planters. Time to go shopping!

The Car Connection is one of the most thorough car review websites I’ve come across. I’ll browse through their site to highlight why I love the site.

Looking at the page for the Mercedes-Benz E-Class you’ll see that they have over 11,000–yes, really–pieces of content about this model. The content ranges from in-depth reviews and photos to all the specs. The sheer volume of the information available is incredible.

So let’s look up another popular model. The main page for the Hummer H2 lists the most recent news for that model. The site is unbiased–everything from recall information to shopping guides are there for every concievable car model.

Take the Mini Clubman. Even though it is by no means the most popular car on the market, The Car Connection agregates 11 expert reviews and nearly 150 user reviews. This is a great “Rotten Tomatoes”-type effect: By bringing in a volume of information, the opinions will level out and give an accurate picture of how the car ranks, on average. (In the case of the Clubman, it’s an 8.4 out of 10.)

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my favourite feature of the site, which is the 360 degree views. Want to check out the Kia Rio but don’t have time to visit the dealership? The 360 degree view feature gives you a virtual walkaround of the car’s interior and exterior. I don’t know how they did it but again, the depth of information is awesome. The next time I’m car shopping (or even dreaming of my next car, which happens a lot), The Car Connection will be my first stop.

Chances are you’ve used a locker many times throughout your life, from pinning your class schedule into the door of your school locker to using lockers at work and at the gym. MoreLockers.com has over 30,000 locker solutions for every purpose imaginable, in scores of shapes, sizes and colors.

The site is ideal for school administrators or project managers tasked with redesigning locker rooms and storage areas. There are solutions for every budget, from wood lockers made from fine cherry, mahogany and maple finishes, to more basic steel school lockers. Many of these options are available in multiple colors, so they fit into your existing color scheme.

When you’re shopping for such a specialty item, using a knowledgeable supplier is of the utmost importance. Rather than choosing from only a few options out of a catalog, you have thousands of locker solutions to choose from here. They stock a wide range of accessories too, with locker room benches, locker panels, shelves, locks and keys, screws, add-ons, ID plates and more available. And, like all good e-stores, the site has a Knowledge Base with FAQs, plus an extensive Help Center that answers all the essential shipping, returns and warranty questions you didn’t even know you had. What more could you want from a specialty locker retailer?

If Google is the juggernaut of the search engine world, ShopWiki looks like it’s poised to become the leader for niche shopping searches. The site crawls Google listings (among others) to create a very flexible shopping search engine. You can also browse the listings by category, such as Kitchen Appliances or Ceramics.

First of all, I love the design of the site. It is clear and easy to navigate, with big, bright buttons where it matters. Once you search for an item, there is also a prominent filtering engine on the right side that helps you narrow down your search by criteria such as price, color and stores. They also feature other products you might be interested in–a search for “casserole dish” also uncovered a featured Pyrex dish set for sale at Amazon.

In addition, ShopWiki has main pages for products that provide shoppers with more information. For example, the Microwave Ovens section provides pages of info on how to buy a microwave. Once you find an item you like (I picked the Whirlpool Over Range microwave), you’re taken directly to a comparison shopping page filled with, in many cases, hundreds of stores stocking the item you want. (Then I filtered it down to just show the black microwaves, of course, because the color-filtering feature is so cool!)

To me, it’s the perfect synergy between search (which we’ve all become accustomed to) with information, all at our collective fingertips.

One of the things I miss most about the small town where I grew up is the mailboxes. Everybody expresses their own personality through the way they accessorize their house, and the first thing you see is the mailbox.

Mailboxixchange is an e-commerce site that sells all sorts of contemporary mailboxes, from large commercial mailboxes to modern mailboxes for individual homes. They have an extensive selection that suits all tastes, but the predominant style is classy, cool mailboxes that will make your home look unique.

The site is really easy to navigate, with helpful videos, useful product descriptions and live help. You can even shop for options like newspaper holders and custom letters and numbers. Overall, it’s the perfect site if you’re thinking about ditching your old, boring mailbox.