How to create a reusable $http data service in AngularJS the recommended way

Question

I've expanded on Misko Heverey's excellent best-practices answer about a recommended way of accessing $http resources from a backend. Now I'm trying to figure out how to DRY it up so that I can make it reusable. It seems that few people writing reusable service components are using Misko's method of returning new Things() that encapsulate their own server operations (like Active Record design pattern). See here and here.

The vision is a single base service that defines the CRUD functions and then child services which define a resource url and use the methods from the base service. Here's the code I'd like to break apart:

app.factory('Thing', function($http,$q) {

    // constructor
    var Thing = function(data) {
        angular.extend(this, data);
    };

    var urlBase = 'https://api.resourceendpoint.com/1/class/things';

    // static methods to retrieve items by id or entire list
    Thing.read = function(id) {
        return $http.get(urlBase + '/' + id).then(
            function(response) {
                // success
                return new Thing(response.data);
            },
            function(response) {
                // failure
                return $q.reject(response);
            }
        );
    };
    Thing.list = function() {
        return $http.get(urlBase).then(
            function(response) {
                // success
                var items = [];
                for(var i = 0; i < response.data.results.length; i++) {
                    items.push(new Thing(response.data.results[i]));
                }
                return items;
            },
            function (response) {
                // failure
                return $q.reject(response);
            }
        );
    };

    // instance CRUD methods for Thing
    Thing.prototype.insert = function() {
        var item = this;
        return $http.post(urlBase, item).then(
            function(response) {
                // success
                item.objectId = response.data.objectId;
                return item;
            },
            function(response) {
                // failure
                return $q.reject(response);
            }
        );
    };
    Thing.prototype.update = function() {
        var item = this;
        return $http.put(urlBase + '/' + item.objectId, item).then(
            function(response) {
                // success
                return item;
            },
            function(response) {
                // failure
                return $q.reject(response);
            }
        );
    };
    Thing.prototype.remove = function() {
        var item = this;
        return $http.delete(urlBase + '/' + item.objectId).then(
            function(response) {
                // success
            },
            function(response) {
                // failure
                return $q.reject(response);
            }
        );
    };

    return Thing;
});