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”.

Miguel Endara, the artist behind the “Hero” video, was interviewed on The Indistry:

Originally I was planning to photograph him with glass on his face, but that was difficult without a good camera and it wouldn’t get good hi-res of the skin and the pores. So I thought the only way to do that inexpensively would be to xerox it or scan it. So used my scanner to scan his face in hi-res of almost 600 dpi which provided me with immense detail.

I did so many scans that I ended up just putting them together and kind of making my own final image. So the look you have know is not of one scan, but of probably 2 or 3 scans put together.

Matt Brian:

US mobile operator AT&T today announced its fourth quarter financial results, declaring that it saw huge growth in mobile broadband sales and smartphone activations, with the iPhone accounting for 81% of all smartphones activated by the carrier.

Crazy.

Federico Viticci:

There’s a lot of weirdness and inconsistencies going on in some Apple apps and interfaces, but the Home screen is the prime example of a user interface meant for 2007 which was subsequently patched and refined and patched again to accomodate new functionalities introduced in iOS.

His conclusion is spot on:

Apple needs to tear apart the whole concept and rebuild it from the ground up.

I know that after using Android 4.0 for a while, my iPhone’s home screen felt so very cramped and dated. The 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.

Ben Brooks, Brett Kelly, Stephen Hackett, and I snuck into one of the side studios to shoot a quick video podcast before the expo starts.

John Gruber:

What’s satisfying about Apple’s current success is that it’s proof that you can succeed wildly by focusing first and foremost on making great products. That design does matter.

Stephen Hackett:

Talking about iPad apps in line at Starbucks isn’t weird anymore.

Adam Lashinsky writing for Fortune about the extremely secretive and productive culture within Apple. Lashinsky writes:

Almost nobody describes working at Apple as being fun. In fact, when asked if Apple is a “fun” place, the responses are remarkably consistent. “People are incredibly passionate about the great stuff they are working on,” said one former employee. “There is not a culture of recognizing and celebrating success. It’s very much about work.” Said another: “If you’re a die-hard Apple geek, it’s magical. It’s also a really tough place to work.” A third similarly dodged the question: “Because people are so passionate about Apple, they are aligned with the mission of the company.”

Reading Lashinsky’s article, I have to wonder if working at Apple is something I would love because of the strong emphasis on work ethic, productivity, excellence in what you do, and respect for everyone’s time, or hate because of the high-stress and non-personal environment.

The article is based on his book, Inside Apple, which hits shelves today.

Great piece by Matthew Alexander that is along the same lines as Topolsky’s article on The Verge last week about too many gadget choices.

Dom Leca, co-founder of Sparrow:

How did you apply for your job? How do you negotiate a deal? How do you review your employee work? What tool are you using when you’re sending message to your loved ones? SMS, Facebook messages, What’s app, Kik are all great new means of communication but mail still has its own territory. Email definitely needs to evolve. Sparrow 1.x is an attempt to marginally change habits. […]

We are trying to make the experience simpler and more enjoyable. This is the first step. Now that we have a pretty solid technical basis, we want to move on a 2.0 version where we can change the paradigm of mail: the way people think of it and use it.

My thanks to MindNode for sponsoring the RSS feed this week.

MindNode is an elegant, easy-to-use mind mapping tool for Mac and iOS. Whether you’re brainstorming for your next project, organizing your life, or planning your vacation, MindNode lets you collect, structure, and expand your ideas. And thanks to built-in Dropbox and WiFi sharing, even your biggest ideas can go anywhere your iPhone does.

MindNode is easy mind mapping for your Mac, iPad, and iPhone. Try out Mindnode Pro and MindNode touch today!