Myke Hurley was kind enough to have me back as a guest on his show, CMD+SPACE. We spent the whole episode answering and discussing listener-submitted questions about what goes in to taking an online side-business or hobby and going full time with it.

While I wouldn’t personally call it a “masterclass” — we focused almost exclusively on the business model of shawnblanc.net, and there are a lot of other types of businesses with very different business models to be built — it was certainly an excellent episode and I hope it will be a resource for folks who want to build something they’re proud of and make enough money to sustain their efforts.

What I see as two good takeaways from the show that could apply to other people in other contexts are: (a) starting a new business is a risk. Be as calculated, cautious, and wise as you can be, but know that there’s no getting around the risk part; and (b) build a business model that thrives when you’re racing to the top.

Wow. This is huge news. Congratulations to Mike and Fred.

And it looks to be good news for Simplenote users as well. As Mike points out on the Simplenote blog:

You know how sometimes, the services you love just disappear when they’re bought by someone else? Or they wither and die a slow and painful death? Not the case here. We made sure of that.

The founder of Automattic, Matt Mullenweg, has been a long-time Simplenote fan. We first met him in 2010 before we joined Y Combinator, and we’ve kept in touch since. Fred and I will never forget the surprise Matt casually unleashed shortly after we decided to join forces. “Hey, by the way…we also bought simplenote.com from the people who were squatting it.” How’s that for a vote of confidence? We finally own simplenote.com!

Regarding Apple’s philosophy versus market share preservation:

The most important thing to Apple is to make the best products in the world that enrich customers’ lives. That’s our high order bit. That means that we aren’t interested in revenue for revenue’s sake. We can put the Apple brand on a lot of things and sell a lot more stuff, but that’s not what we’re here for. We want to make only the best products.

Lots of huge numbers today. The ones that amaze me the most? 500,000,000 iOS devices sold to date; and last quarter they were selling them at a rate of 10 per second. Krikey.

— Posted from my iPhone

Sound advice from Joshua Blankenship.

Riposte is a sweet, brand-new iPhone app for App.net. Two things about it which I like right off the bat:

• Riposte implements the hamburger / basement navigational flyout. Some people are advocates against this sort of navigational design, but I think it’s great in the proper context. For an app like Riposte it especially makes sense because for an App.net client, the only view most people need is their main, unified timeline.

• Riposte’s login screen has a link to 1Password. My app.net password is some nonsensical string I don’t know, and I literally had 1Password open and waiting on my iPad as I was waiting for Riposte to download on my iPhone. But, to my surprise, there was the 1P link waiting for those who want to use it (Riposte only shows you the link if you have 1P installed on your iPhone).

Using 1Password 4’s URL schemes, Riposte launched me to 1Password and performed a search in my 1P database for “app.net”, thus getting me to my login info about as fast as possible. From there I copied my password, returned to Riposte, typed in my username, and then pasted my password.

What a clever and thoughtful idea. This is the first time I’ve seen anything like this, and I hope it’s not the last.

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My thanks to AAPLtrader.com for sponsoring the RSS feed this week. Sponsorship by The Syndicate.

Today we kicked off a new feature to Tools & Toys: guides. This first one is our guide to a paperless office, written by my pal, Stephen Hackett. It’s a quick and concise overview of everything you need to obviate your filing cabinet.

This is just the start of a lot more we’ve got planned for Tools & Toys. If you want to follow along, and you totally should, you can find us on Twitter and RSS.

Fun interview with Loren Brichter (is anything involving Loren ever not fun?), sharing some of the behind the scenes info on how Letterpress came about and how Loren likes to work:

In the case of Letterpress, we played rough prototypes as I fleshed out the guts. Tweaks and polish happened in parallel as I finished off features; I like jumping back and forth between a few different things to let my subconscious chew on one problem while my conscious works on something else.

“Let’s imagine that Siri listened in on your phone calls.”

The show is back from its extended holiday break. Ben and I kick of 2013 by talking about following people on Twitter and ordering Americanos from Starbucks.

If you’re interested in working with us to directly sponsor the show, please do get in touch.

My new favorite Javascript bookmarklet. Second only to these ones for bookmarking the current Web page in Pinboard.

Some perspective:

On its back are uncountable scratches and scuff marks, the home button is slowly starting to get less responsive, and the front glass is a fingerprint magnet. But it’s served me brutally well over four years and I imagine it’ll continue doing that for a while longer. I can get to the information I want, talk to the people I want to talk to, and brain-dump my thoughts into a virtual blank piece of paper as the need arises. It’s still the closest thing to a PADD from Star Trek that I have, and every day I feel like I’m living a little bit in the future. Four years, and counting.

Coincidentally, the iPhone 3G is the only iPhone I haven’t owned. I used my original for two years unit the 3GS came out.

(Via Patrick Rhone, of course.)