Meanwhile, in southern Alaska...

I first read this story when it came out some time ago. An amazing story.

In the crew's quarters below the bridge, Saw "Lucky" Kyin, the ship's 41-year-old Burmese steward, rinses off in the common shower. The ship rolls underneath his feet. He's been at sea for long stretches of the past six years. In his experience, when a ship rolls to one side, it generally rolls right back the other way.

This time it doesn't.

Read it at http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-03/ff_seacowboys

Asana's mobile app 2.0: still lackluster

I wrote a longish Quora answer some time ago on the topic of why it was taking a long time for Asana to deliver a great mobile app with offline functionality: http://www.quora.com/Asana/Why-is-it-taking-months-for-Asana-to-deliver-a-native-mobile-app-with-offline-support

Even though pretty much none of there remarks were taken into account in the new version of Asana's mobile app, I was still hopeful that the new version would bring much needed usability improvements: http://blog.asana.com/2012/09/our-iphone-app-levels-up/

Unfortunately, this new mobile interface still comes short on a large number of points:

* Unexpected bugs (I tweeted about one last week that prevented me from using the app)
* No way to see the details of a priority heading (right I'm stuck not being able to access a link I know I stored in the "Notes" field of a heading)
* No search (!)
* No way to assign a task to more than one project, nor to move it from a project to another (which kills severak if the workflows I'm using)
* Clunky navigation (switching from a task in a project in a workspaces to another task in another project in another workspace requires a lot of taps)

In their blog post, the Asana team states that "Our ultimate goal is a mobile experience that matches the craftsmanship, elegance and power of the desktop web app. We think this version gets a long way towards that goal, and we hope you agree!".

Let's agree to disagree.

Article: Napster, Udacity, and the Academy

Clay Shirky is at it again. Enlightening, as usual.

> Once you see this pattern—a new story rearranging people’s sense of the possible, with the incumbents the last to know—you see it everywhere. First, the people running the old system don’t notice the change. When they do, they assume it’s minor. Then that it’s a niche. Then a fad. And by the time they understand that the world has actually changed, they’ve squandered most of the time they had to adapt.


From: http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2012/11/napster-udacity-and-the-academy/

Article: Stables and Volatiles

> Lastly and most importantly, these guys and gals hate -- hate -- each other. Volatiles believe Stables are fat, lazy, and bureaucratic. They believe Stables have become "The Man." Meanwhile, Stables believe Volatiles hold nothing sacred and are doing whatever they please, company or product be damned. Bad news: everyone is right.


From: http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2012/11/14/stables_and_volatiles.html

If this article is representative of its overall quality, I'll be seriously considering a subscription to Marco Ament's The Magazine.