As I waste-time on the internet (err, do market research) I bookmark attractive sites. My only scruple is that I try to pick a site that is totally off-topic in a completely different industry. One of my projects recently "was inspired by" http://heroku.com/. I hope they take that as a compliment.
my feed reader is full of design blogs that i use to siphon ideas into my head. i'm not good with creative design. i design like an engineer would -- i look at a lot of things, take the pieces i like, and reassemble them together to the best of my abilities.
most of the things i create are just compilations of things i've seen in the past that i thought were neat.