This blog has moved to Tumblr

I decided to move my blog across from Blogger to Tumblr. It’s prettier, and seems to do what I want more easily. The UI for blogger is old and a bit crappy, and I like the follower/re-posting ease of Tumblr, better connections with Twitter, simple Disqus integration etc. 

The tumblr blog is available at:

http://joshuamarch.com

Main bummer was that the import was unofficial (there’s no official way of doing it) - I used this tool:

http://terrymhung.com/jtran/tumblr/import-blogger-to-tumblr.php

Which means that none of my comments have moved over. So, I'm leaving all of my old posts up here so that I can keep the comments.

Onwards and up!

Speed reading on iPad.

A major element to fast reading is using a pointer (such as your
finger or a pen) to track the text as you read. I don't want to press
a pen against my iPad; but sliding your finger along in most reading
devices turns a page. I wish these apps (kindle etc) would allow me to
select swipe vertical or swipe horizontal to read, so I could do this;
similarly with Instapaper - if you swipe sideways it repeatedly asks
you if you want to turn on pagination, even if you've told it no
repeatedly 100 times. Should be a relatively simple fix.

Why Asana will win

Over the weekend, Conversocial got access to the Asana beta, and I've been playing with it for the last few days. We've generally found that most project management / task management tools get used excitedly at first, then tend to tail off, or end up being half used along with multiple other systems. Asana is the first tool I've seen that has the chance to become our 100% tool. Why? It covers all of my task management needs - personally, as well as collaboratively. They straight away split the tool into personal and work projects, allowing you to use it as your private to-do list manager, as well as for work to-dos, assigning to-dos for team members etc. It all happens in a single screen that never needs re-loading, with super fast javascript and ajax allowing it to run almost as a desktop app. When a colleague adds items or comments, they show up instantly on your screen.

I've ended up transferring all my to-dos, otherwise stored in Things on my desktop, into Asana; and quickly started using it for managing our marketing, admin, and management projects. The project and tagging system is simple but highly effective, allowing easy management of large lists distributed across teams and projects; and keyboard shortcuts, like gmail, make it extremely fast for power users with minimal learning required. It may even become our dev PM tool. Oh - and it lets me add tasks by email, super useful for my personal to-dos (before, I would email myself then manually add it to Things).

Unlike any other tools we've used, Asana now remains permanently open on one of my screens, with pretty much constant use throughout the day - just like my gmail window. It's the first task/project management tool to do that for me. It's still in Beta, and certainly needs a lot more work; but I see this as a tool that will gain a permanent place on our desktops.

Forecasts for 2011

At the beginning of this month, Jemima Kiss at the Guardian asked me what my forecasts were for 2011. My answers (below) were originally published on the PDA blog on the 1st of January here. 

What will 2010 be remembered for? 

"2010 is the year that tablet computing has really taken hold, from iPhone and Android to iPads and all the other upcoming tablets - along with the creation of a number of significant businesses building touch software, from games to utility applications. Tablets allow a multitude of devices and items that formerly required their own specialised, physical objects, to be built entirely in software - so the iPhone and iPad are now music players, cameras, alarm clocks, newspapers, books, movie players, document scanners, gaming devices, email devices, tube maps, tv remotes... a few years ago all of these were individual items. The fact that my iPhone can scan documents better than my scanner can is pretty amazing, and this is primarily allowed because of the fully flexible nature of touch screen tablets, as their controls and features have almost no physical limitation.

"In terms of what we've learnt, this year there has been a real acceptance of the dominance and importance of Facebook (and Twitter, so some extent) - especially for businesses, which are not just shifting marketing budget into social platforms in huge amounts, but also have really learnt that to be in these channels properly, they have to dedicate real resource, across departments - especially customer support. They can't just throw money at it - too many companies have been burnt by poor social media management. 

What was your best and worst moment?

"The best was definitely launching Conversocial to the public in July, a social media management system that we had been working on since late 2009, and which has had a great reception. We're seeing more and more companies set up dedicated resource to manage communications and marketing through social platforms, and they need tools to help them manage that.

"My worst was just before Christmas - waiting for three hours in a horde of angry passengers for the Eurostar, which we didn't manage to get on. There was an absolute lack of communication from Eurostar about what was going on, and although they've got their act together slightly more, simply tweeting to people that they're doing their best doesn't help if they don't give out any actual info. Being on Twitter, even responding to people, doesn't make a difference if your staff don't have the information or ability to actually help people." 

What's your hot tip for 2011? 

"It's been a massively exciting year in the tech startup world in London. There are a number of companies that have been steadily developing over the past couple of years that are showing real growth in terms of users, customers, and importantly revenue. In 2011 a lot of these are going to break out as major international companies, which will encourage more venture investment into UK companies, at earlier stages. There have been a lot of wannabes in the start up world in London in the past couple of years, next year I think we're going to be seeing some real, serious business coming out of it." 

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