* The six best credit cards for parents. This ran as a Mother’s Day special, but it’s got some great ideas for Dads, too.
* The five best credit cards for recent college grads. New regulations make it tougher for students to get credit, but deals get better if you wait until graduation to open your own account.
* New credit card deals coming. Now that the delinquency rate on credit cards in the U.S. has dropped back to relative “normal,” investors have started pressuring banks to increase their personal lending portfolios. Expect some great balance transfer deals into the summer.

I love having a team like Curtis, Tim, and Amber, who keep challenging me to find great stories that help our readers save money. Check out what they’ve done with the archives to make it easier to find relevant articles.

I’m through the hardest part of the “remastering” process on the spinme.com books series, so I’ve been able to spend more time posting new essays to the site:

• “What’s culturally significant?“ I remember being part of a team that asked this question at WXPN in the late 1990s, and it crops up again today. When you can make a living with 1,000 true fans, what can you do to tip the scales into being culturally significant instead of merely self-sufficient? Part one, part two.
• How to offer your services as a producer… The mailbag offers a glimpse at a hobbypreneur who wants to find artists to record in his awesome project studio. Except the artists he finds aren’t so awesome.
• How Kickstarter could stifle success. I love the idea of pre-ordering new albums, but I agree that offering fans too much influence in the recording process could water down the work.

I’m getting some of my best ideas when responding to mailbag questions, so keep ‘em coming!

• Avoiding phony mortgage brokers: Based on a compelling report from the Miami Herald, we list four ways you can keep from getting ripped off by a fake refinancing specialist.
• Refinancing during rate fluctuations: Locking a home loan rate right before a market downturn can make you feel more foolish than hitting on 17 in Vegas, unless you learn not to sweat the small stuff.
• Getting government help to spot mortgage fraud: New rules keep some scammers out of the refinancing business.

The ShopRate web team has also put together new versions of the site’s free mortgage calculators, to help you decide how much house you can afford.

• Learning to hear when folks tell you “no.” There’s been a wave of posts online at the start of the year about saying “no” to overcommitment. So, I wrote a confessional about a time in my life when I took on too much and got called out on it. What came next may very well define my long-term career, so learning how to bounce back from rejection has become something I talk about a lot.
• Where to sell your music online. Revising my manuscripts from 2001-2005 has been both tiring and exhilarating. Weirdly, it’s gotten both way easier and way more confusing for artists to sell their work online.
• Luck means nothing in the music business. I had no idea that the end of 2010 would bring one of the most popular (and most commented) posts in recent years. Readers really resonated with these four steps to getting over yourself and preparing for success.

All of the positivity coming from my readers has really encouraged me to spend more time actively developing spinme.com again. Instead of being the side project I pursue between other client work, I’ve been carving out time to get reconnected with my community, and I find the work enriching. I’m so very excited about the topics I’ve got on my whiteboard for the next ten weeks.

The comments and tweetbacks from that post inspired a bigger piece about influence. It’s easy to chase a big Twitter follower count, but do you really know the impact your work has on your core audience? The offline networking post did that for me, so I wondered aloud about whether musicians are really thinking about the real power they have to improve the lives of their listeners.

Read the full article over at CardRatings.com…

From my newsblog at CardRatings.com:

• Shrinking Credit Card Defaults Cheer Issuing Banks
• RevolutionCard Enlists Fifth Third Bank for Credit Card Security Overhaul
• Outsourced Credit Card Programs Help Small Banks Attract Customers
• Capital One Confirms Credit Card Interest Rate Freeze
• American Express’ New Charge Card Offers Triple Reward Points to Frequent Flyers

Hoteliers who can leverage the right CRM software with the right associate training can help their companies survive a recession. That’s what InterContinental Hotel Group plans to do. Tom Seddon, the Chief Marketing Officer for the company behind top brands like Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza, told BrandWeek that his company is banking on help from CRM solutions to grow business.

Read more at Small Business CRM…

• CRM Software Blog: Hosted CRM Can Protect Your Customers from Identity Theft
• CRM Software Blog: Home Builders Unearth More Sales Using CRM Software
• CRM Software Blog: Startup Depression Spawns Spike in Demand for Hosted CRM
• CRM Software Blog: Companies Test Twitter Inside CRM Applications
• CRM Software Blog: CRM Software Tracks New Prospects with Google Alerts
• CRM Software Blog: How Easily Can You Export Data from Your CRM Software?