I've  been meaning to write this post for a while. Since I'm about to go on vacation and the posting here will be light, I encourage you to follow these blogs if you are not already. In the order that I first began subscribing to them:

Best Financial Service Industry Blogs

• Best financial services news blog: Payments News from Scott Loftesness at Glenbrook Partners is far and away the best source for tracking financial industry news, especially on the payments side. Scott has an uncanny ability to find every pertinent article published anywhere around the globe. And I swear he must never sleep. For sheer scope, it absolutely blows away American Banker, the pre-blogosphere "publication of record" for the banking industry.  
  
• Best strategic thinking in financial services, especially online banking: The Bankwatch from ex-Bank of Montreal exec Colin Henderson. Colin covers an enormous amount of ground in his writings, from organizational development to direct marketing. And his involvement with peer-to-peer startup Community Lend provides an important real-world perspective.   
  
• Best behind-the-scenes look at social media, especially as it relates to financial services and the credit union space: OpenSource CU is another wide-ranging and pointed commentary from the brilliant crew at Trabian (Brent, Trey and Matt). Full disclosure: I won a $5 Starbucks card from them in a comment contest earlier this year.
  
• Best way to track bank and credit union offers: Bank Deals, written by an anonymous engineer who is a prolific poster in his spare time. It's like BankRate.com without the advertising and forced pageviews. Unlike the others listed here, Bank Deals is a pure B2C blog, so you only get the facts, no strategic insights.  
  
• Best antidote to all the b.s. circulating online: Marketing ROI by ex-Forrester analyst Ron Shevlin. Today's post is great example, as he dismantles a recently published article that attempted to convince readers that online banking leads to more online shopping.

Off-Topic

• TechCrunch: The inspiration for hundreds, if not thousands of blogs, including ours. It's been diluted a bit with more posts and more authors now, but when Silicon Valley insider and founder Michael Arrington digs into a subject, it's still a fascinating read. And with 400,000 readers, the comment stream can be even more interesting than the post.
  
• Freakonomics: From the authors of the best selling book of the same name. While they rarely touch on financial subjects, the blog is always thought- provoking and entertaining.