Ever notice how interesting things tend to happen in threes? Here’s my three things for the day, starting with that 170-year-old ebook.

No, when Ralph Waldo Emerson pulled together his notes for Self-Reliance from meetups where he’d social networked with other thought leaders his time, the only things digital were at the ends of people’s arms. Instead, he was trying to fill a gap in the public discourse, get a message out in the preferred media of the time that people then and now need to hear: conformity for the sake of conformity is quicksand for the soul. Being a nonconformist is more than an attitude, it’s a perspective.

Hats off to Seth Godin and company for bringing this classic back to life, and adding insights from thinkers and doers today. In fact, today and tomorrow you can pick up this classic in digital form free: Ibex is sponsoring the Kindle version so it costs you zip nada zero to get.

Speaking of today, my ebook, MicroISV Sites that Sell! had been rebranded, reformatted and hopefully debugged as Startup Sites that Sell – and you can grab it today only over at Bits du Jour for $12.47. If you already have MicroISV Sites that Sell, and you want a copy that will read well on an iPad and won’t gobble up your printer color cartridges, email me. No new content in this edition, but there’s a lot of developers jumping into the murky waters of marketing for the first time that I think this ebook can help, based on the many emails I’ve gotten since its first release in 2008.

And finally, I’m working on a new ebook especially for mobile app developers who need to build their own web sites and connect with customers outside the confines of any particular App Store. After buying 664 iOS apps, I have a pretty good eye for what works and what horribly misses the mark when it comes to creating a web site for your brand new baby. How do you reduce the odds your very first app gets slammed in its very first customer review? What’s different – very different – about a software web site where the actual buying happens elsewhere? What do people need to see back on that sales page to buy not just a given app, but buy into letting you on their smartphones?

I hope to find the answers to these and other questions as I write this ebook. Find, not pontificate about, because my approach is to go find people out there who know firsthand the answers, and bring back to my readers their insights, experiences, and hard-earned lessons. Case in point, I interviewed today Josh Clark, author of Tapworthy: Designing Great iPhone Apps and Best Iphone Apps: The Guide for Discriminating Downloaders and a guest on the Startup Success Podcast (Show #80) who has thought long and hard on what makes an app work. Josh shared some excellent, actionable insights that every mobile app developer (or at least the ones who want to make money) need to think about.

If you make/sell a mobile app and want to share your experience, insight and URLs, please email me! bob.walsh@47hats.com.