Shawn Blanc

Watching Venus zip past the sun is just as amazing as the solar flares. And space.com has a stellar collection of photos.

One of my favorite Bradbury quotes: “Love is the answer to everything. It’s the only reason to do anything. If you don’t write stories you love, you’ll never make it. If you don’t write stories that other people love, you’ll never make it.”

“Where great ideas go on to do great things.”

Kyle Baxter:

The newspaper was a powerful medium because they could be a deep window into the world. They provided readers with a clear understanding of what’s going on in the world that’s worth knowing, meaningful insight to what’s important about each of those headlines, and the opportunity to learn about topics readers never would have sought out themselves. Coverage, insight, serendipity. All in one place, consistently.

Coincidentally, news on the web has a huge problem: the abundant supply (which eroded the newspaper’s business model) creates an overwhelming amount of noise.

Great, great piece by Kyle.

Greg Bensinger, for WSJ:

[T]he amount of time spent making old-fashioned voice calls [from cell phones] has fallen every year since Apple Inc. the iPhone in 2007.

The average cell phone call is now about half the length it was in 2006. My wife and I are on the smallest AT&T voice plan available and we still have rollover minutes coming out our ears.

(Via Lessien.)

My cousin has been using an Android phone for as long as I can remember. Recently he upgraded to the Galaxy Nexus, and after using for a while has posted this review on Amazon:

These type of polish issues become especially frustrating when you consider that the Nexus line is supposed to generate Google’s “reference phones” for Android. […]

As annoying as it is to admit, Apple is showing that they are the only company with enough attention to detail to merit the patronage of discerning customers.

This week’s episode of B&A is so great. Like the inspirational slogan painted on the wall of my high school gymnasium, Marco’s new motto should be Go Big or Go Home.

Offscreen is a full-color, quarterly print magazine that connects with people who work online to talk about things related to life offline. It’s a stellar concept with an equally stellar execution.

After coming up $4,000 short in their Kickstarter project last winter, Kai Brach went ahead with the project anyway, and issue number 1 shipped in March.

Now the second issue is available for order, and it has a stellar lineup. To list just a bit of what’s inside: Kai has interviews with Gedeon Maheux, Mark Jardine, Shaun Inman, and Dan Counsell; contributions from Noah Stokes, Kyle Steed, and Chris Glass; and even an essay from yours truly.

My thanks to Flexibits for sponsoring the RSS feed this week to promote Fantastical.

Fantastical is the Mac calendar app you’ll actually love to use. Type in that you have “Lunch with John on Friday at 1pm” and Fantastical will schedule it! Or type in that you need to “Buy milk by Tuesday” and Fantastical will create a reminder with a due date!

Fantastical’s natural language event/reminder creation, beautiful calendar, and gorgeous list make it the best calendar you’ll ever use. Stay on top of your schedule with features like native CalDAV support, automatic alarms for new events, iCal and iOS reminder support, and instant search.

Get your free 14-day free trial now!

Dave Lee:

The most important thing for the creative innovator is not a ton of tasks to do but rather the ability to see what’s important to focus on and to focus on that deeply. The creative innovator needs to go deep on a feature or issue, and the deeper they go the more creativity they unleash.

I agree. I’ve found that time management is far more important than task management when it comes to getting creative projects accomplished. Yes I use OmniFocus every day, but the vast majority of its to-do items are not for any current projects I’m working on. Rather I use it for keeping track of the administrative and logistical things I need to do. In fact, if I had someone else to run my business for me and all I had to do was write, I probably wouldn’t have a need for OmniFocus.

This sweet Mac app now has an iPhone counterpart.

Well waddayaknow. There is now an official Instapaper client for Android. Marco Arment commissioned the fine folks at Mobelux to build it. Ellis Hamburger and The Verge got to break the news with an exclusive review of the new app.

A bookshelf, a box, a typewriter, and the hide of an African antelope.