We’ve just released a new app designed to help landscape contractors and lawn care operators better benchmark their companies against their competition.

The Benchmarking Your Business Report and the companion app, both sponsored exclusively by Exmark, draw on extensive data Lawn & Landscape collected throughout the year from its national readership. Taken together, the report and app give contractors powerful tools to guide their business and plan for 2013.

The web app, an extension of the 2012 Benchmarking Your Business Report published in November, allows contractors to quickly see where they stack up against their regional and national colleagues when it comes to purchasing, rates of pay, revenue and overall scale of business.

You can access the app via any web-enabled device – your laptop, tablet or phone – at bit.ly/benchmarkapp.

We’re happy to report that we’ve launched a new podcast series – The Lawn Care Radio Network – to help make your windshield time more productive.

It’s designed to bring you the same business insight and industry information you expect from L&L, but in a more portable format. You can subscribe in iTunes or listen on our website.

The series, which we’ll update throughout the month, is brought to you by Valent Professional Products, Agrium Advanced Technologies and Exmark.

So check it out, take a listen and let us know what you think!

Snow Circles from Beauregard, Steamboat Aerials on Vimeo.

Here’s our weekly collection of cool stuff we found online. Enjoy!

• U.S. cities lose 4 million trees a year
• Write better Twitter headlines.
• Toilet-to-tap turn you off? It’s good enough for astronauts
• New rules for H-2B.
• These Mark Awards are pretty bad-ass.
• Where is the River Volga? What Tomas Edison asked potential hires in his interview process.
• Above: The making of snow circle art by Sonja Hinrichsen at Rabbit Ear Pass, Steamboat Springs, Colo. (via The Dirt)