Dan and Tom, the guys behind Studio Neat, wrote a book about what they’ve learned over the past few years since their runaway Kickstarter project launched them into self-employment. I read the whole book cover to cover (or however that works in iBooks) in one sitting, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s very well written and full of great information.

Seth Godin:

The fact that it’s been done before makes just about any task more amenable to persistence.

But does the fact that it’s been done before also lead to complacency within the market? Choosing instead to iterating on what others have done rather than innovation?

Great piece by Kyle Baxter.

“Let’s dream it, and let’s build it.”

Gabe again, with a writeup on one of Glassboard’s premium features: exporting a board as HTML. You sure can’t do that on Facebook.1

For me, Glassboard has proven to be a great conference attendee tool. Got a bunch of pals all in town for an event? Put together a board and you’ve got a mobile group messaging app that makes communicating with the group super easy. But for 49 weeks I’m not out of town for an event, I never had much use for this otherwise great app.

That’s why I like Gabe’s writeup of how he’s using Glassboard instead of Facebook to communicate and share with friends and family. Clever.

Jim Dalrymple:

If Samsung is forced to stop copying Apple, there is only one option left — innovate. Instead of sitting back and making their phones and tablets look exactly like the iPhone and iPad, Samsung will now have to do some work. The hardware and software will have to be different, unique and innovative.

Neil Armstrong, the first human to set foot on the moon, died on August 25, 2012. In honor of his life and career, LIFE.com is republishing the page spreads — and, in effect, the entire issue — of LIFE magazine’s famous August 11, 1969, special edition, “To the Moon and Back.”

My thanks to Checkmark for sponsoring the RSS feed this week. I reviewed this iPhone app last month and heartily recommend it. I’ve found it to be far better than Apple’s built-in reminders app when it comes to the accuracy and reliability of location-based reminders.

 

Checkmark is the fastest way to create location- or time-based reminders for iPhone.

In just a few seconds you can create new reminders — it only takes 3 taps! You can watch this little movie we made to see it in action.

In only 3 taps you can remind yourself to:

• Do laundry when you get home
• Pick up milk next time you’re at the grocery store
• Call your wife when you leave work
• Remember to pick up a cake at 3 pm tomorrow
• Make a haircut appointment on Tuesday at 10 am

You can even add a timer to location-based reminders so the alert goes off when you’re ready to get it done — like 15 minutes after you arrive home.

Checkmark is available in the App Store for $2.99.

––
Sponsorship by The Syndicate

When Phil Schiller introduced the new MacBook Pro with Retina display at WWDC, he said it was most beautiful computer Apple had ever made. In the promo video, Jony Ive said “it’s without doubt, the very best computer we’ve ever built.”

But I mean, they have to say that, right?

No. I think they get to say it.

When Apple compliments their products with such high praise as “this is the very best and most beautiful computer we’ve ever made” they mean it. I have yet to read a review of the Retina MacBook Pro that didn’t say something along the lines of this is the best computer ever.

When Apple says something that sounds like marketing hype, it’s usually not hype or exaggeration. Apple’s products now tend to live up to the claims Apple puts on them — if they don’t surpass those claims.

Certainly an improvement to the London Olympics logo. (Via The Verge.)

Michael Mace:

This is my biggest concern about the Facebook phone idea.  The company could easily produce a phone that is just good enough to scare away its other phone partners, without being good enough to dominate the smartphone market.  The Facebook phone could call into being the exact industry structure that Facebook wants to avoid.  That’s why I see it as hideously high risk, a bet-the-company move that should be taken only when there’s no other chance to survive.

It seems to me that Facebook would be better off trying to negotiate deeper integration into iOS and Android, as well as building killer native apps. But, as Mace points out, that’s not easily monetized.

A good in-depth look at the new suite of Things apps, the Cloud Sync, and what has changed.

If you’re on the fence between Things and OmniFocus, I’d say give Things a shot. People who need OmniFocus usually know they need it. But if you’re just trying to find a simple task manager that’s in sync, why not use Simplenote and store your to-do list as a plain text document?

Jim Dalrymple:

A 7-inch iPad will put Apple in some very unfamiliar territory in the tablet market — it’s an area currently dominated by Android-based devices. However, Apple’s entry into that segment will also present some seemingly insurmountable challenges to those same companies.

Android tablet makers will no longer be able to compete by differentiating on price or form factor.