I got Launch Center when it first came out a few months ago, but the idea of having quick-access to certain actions in the Notification Center never really stuck for me. But, with Launch Center’s newly-added support of app URLs, it’s gotten a new life for me.

This app has landed on my Home screen and is now the fastest way for me to get to:

• the “snap a photo” screen in Instagram;
• the “new entry” screen in OmniFocus;
• adjust my iPhone screen’s brightness;
• and more.

Last week, when I linked to Federico Viticci’s article about what’s wrong with the iOS Home screen, I wrote that the iOS Home screen doesn’t just need to be a springboard to get to apps, in some ways it needs to be an app in and of itself. I think Launch Center brings up some useful ideas and insights into how a more useful iPhone Home screen could function.

See also Dave Caolo’s slew of use-case scenarios and URLs for Launch Center.

I was a guest on yesterday’s episode of The Bro Show. We talked about Macworld 2012 and discussed if the iPad is a PC or not.

For a backpack, I agree that the Smart Alec is nice. I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank Ben for hauling my iPad, my extra iPhone charger, and my sweater around during Macworld. At first I thought he was just being extra nice, but I realize now he was probably just collecting data for his “conference mode” review of the Smart Alec.

My thanks to Déjà Vu for sponsoring the RSS feed this week.

Déjà Vu is your visual memory. Use the app by taking pictures of things you would like to remember. For example, products you see in a magazine, recipes you read in a cooking book, wine labels in a restaurant, Newspaper article, DVDs, CDs or event flyers. Each picture is a visual memo. A regular camera app doesn’t distinguish those photos of stuff from “regular“ photos. Déjà Vu helps people organize and structure their visual memos in an easy and effective way. It does this by a tailored interface for tagging and categorization and integration of image recognition technology.

Features

• Quick shot camera (allows faster picture taking)
• Image recognition integrated
• Syncs with cloud account
• Easy search (find your visual memos by keywords and tags)
• Map location (locate your visual memos on a map)
• Available on iPhone and Web

Free for up to 30 visual memos/month. Learn more at Kooaba.

Address Book is one of the worst apps in Lion. iMovie may be the worst, but you have to buy iMovie. Address Book is certainly the worst app that ships with Lion — it’s ugly and extremely difficult to navigate. A 3rd-party replacement for Address Book is ripe for the shipping.

Cobook is a still-in-beta-but-it’s-public-beta-so-technically-it’s-version-1.0-right-? contact manager app that lives in your menu bar. It launches at a key combo, connects with Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and is supposed to replace the default Address Book app that ships with Lion.

I downloaded Cobook on Monday and have been giving it a whirl, but I’m doubtful that it’ll stick for me. We’ll see. I like what Cobook is doing and I think it’s a clever app — it is quick, minimal, and easy to navigate. It’s well done to be sure. But I don’t think it meets my needs for an Address Book replacement.

I have two primary needs and one obscure need:

1. Quick access to look up info about someone in my contacts.
2. Quickly add a new contact to my address book.
3. Manage groups for the purpose of some newsletters I send out (unrelated to this site).

The first need I meet via LaunchBar. The second is built into OS X (primarily in Mail). The third was awesome in Address Book on 10.6 and previous, and it horrid in the current version, and it still doesn’t exist in Cobook.

So, all that to say, I hope more apps like Cobook pop up because there is a market for them. I know I would love to see some more innovation like this in the Address Book space.

Speaking of “any little differentiator“, Nicholas Deleon wrote a short profile about DuckDuckGo for The Daily:

[Gabriel Weinberg] designed DuckDuckGo to address some of the concerns that people have had with Google and other search engines over the years. “We try to focus on things that the big guys don’t do for a variety of reasons,” he said. “Usually those reasons aren’t technical, but rather business, legal, and cultural. It’s somewhat silly trying to compete with Google on a technical basis.”

Great show with Marco Arment on NPR’s Planet Money podcast. I liked this line by Marco:

When the market is that big of everybody that uses the internet, any little differentiator can get you enough of a customer base to support yourself and a few other people.

What a great shot by John Carey of the best coffee joint in San Francisco.

I had the honor of being interviewed by one of the writers I read, Stephen Hackett, for his site, 512 Pixels. We talked mostly about my transition into a full-time writer and topics surrounding writing for the Web and going full time with it, etc.

Federico Viticci:

The iOS-ification of OS X is, at this point, inevitable, and anyone who doesn’t see it, or tries to neglect, is either software-blind or has some kind of interest in that way of thinking.

You’ve got: (a) apps that started as iPhone apps which then became iPad apps which then also became Mac apps (Reeder being the paramount example); and (b) Apple itself making more and more of the features and designs in OS X feel and look like those in iOS.

And it’s only at the beginning…

I’m giving this a shot in place of the built-in WordPress search engine.

Recorded yesterday before a live studio audience in our hotel lobby while attending Macworld in San Francisco.

Brought to you by, Verses, who is doing a giveaway. Details for that are in the show notes.

Daniel Markovitz wrote the article I’ve been mulling on for a while. In short: a concrete schedule is more powerful a tool for getting things done than an unordered list of tasks. Unlike Markovitz, I use both. I have a daily to-do list and a routine schedule. The to-do list is the “what”, the schedule is the “when”.