Re:Asana (no longer private alpha)
by klausa on Tuesday October 25, 2011 @03:54AM
(#3153243)
I couldn't figure what what this things was after skimming over landing page - after watching 'How to use Asana, in 2 minutes' it seems like it's kind of task-list/to-do/reminder thing - which makes me think of Trello. Honest question - how is it different and/or better than Trello?
Re:Asana (no longer private alpha)
by ajtaylor on Tuesday October 25, 2011 @08:45AM
(#3153847)
Thanks for the pointer to Trello. What an amazing yet simple tool! I immediately have a ton of uses for it. Thanks to the google account integration I had a new board in literally 10 seconds. Wow...
Re:Asana (no longer private alpha)
by endeavor on Tuesday October 25, 2011 @12:01PM
(#3154524)
I tried and compared Asana, Trello and a few other tools a couple months ago. I ended up feeling that Asana was geared more towards larger projects with multiple teams and organizations. Closer to MS Project and Merlin. Trello seems more like a lightweight, less structured tool that is good for individual/small/medium teams. Closer to Pivotal Tracker or RememberTheMilk.
Re:Asana (no longer private alpha)
by vlokshin on Tuesday October 25, 2011 @05:09AM
(#3153390)
You could spend time going feature to feature comparing the two and waiting for feedback from others -- or you could use both for 2 minutes each and instantly know the difference.
Re:Asana (no longer private alpha)
by klausa on Tuesday October 25, 2011 @08:25AM
(#3153799)
If you're asking about Trello - then I see one big difference - Trello has way simpler interface - to the point I could send my boss and colleagues invites and they immediately knew how to use it - whereas even my most geeky friends had problems figuring out how to use Wave (I did too.).
Re:Asana (no longer private alpha)
by endeavor on Tuesday October 25, 2011 @11:48AM
(#3154454)
They seem completely different to me. GWave is a collaboration/communication tool. Asana is a project management/planning tool. In theory you could do PM with GWave but it would be a bit of a stretch.
Re:Asana (no longer private alpha)
by bane on Tuesday October 25, 2011 @09:02AM
(#3153895)
I thought you were joking till I checked:
19 staff/founders and 14 board/advisors? No wonder it took them 3 years to get to beta with a fancy to-do app -- too many cooks in the kitchen!
(on closer inspection, not everybody on the list has something to do with the app, they also list their chef, a "coordinator" (whatever that means), and recruiters and sales folks)
with all kinds of ex-FB and ex-Googlers (and an ex-Palantir and Yelp) including data scientists, mathematicians and machine learning folks, I have a feeling they must have more in store than what they show here:
Re:Asana (no longer private alpha)
by endeavor on Tuesday October 25, 2011 @11:44AM
(#3154437)
I worry that that had such easy access to VC money that they decided to grow too soon. With the names of their roster, I assume people just showed up with wheel-barrels full of of money. With that many people you are already running into coordination and scaling problems. If you don't have a really clear product to focus on then you can have problems.
Re:Asana (no longer private alpha)
by synnik on Tuesday October 25, 2011 @08:04AM
(#3153744)
Agreed - the app itself looks fine, but it is trying to enter a very crowded market that has no real barrier to entry. And also no real killer features.
So I worry whether or not there is an actual underlying business model that can sustain such a large team.
Re:Asana (no longer private alpha)
by koevet on Tuesday October 25, 2011 @04:56AM
(#3153364)
My company has been using Asana for the last few months and we have been quite happy with the outcome. IT IS really just a glorified task list.
Asana team has put lot of effort into building a snappy user interface that feels almost like working on a native app (shortcuts, etc).
I miss a native iphone app even though the mobile site works ok.
Re:Asana (no longer private alpha)
by scottostler on Tuesday October 25, 2011 @08:59AM
(#3153881)
Even though Lunascript the reactive web language has been scrapped, Luna the reactive web Javascript framework is still plenty interesting. Building a web framework is much more reasonable for a prelaunch startup.
However, that's from a quora post written almost a year ago. We'll have to wait and see.
Too many people?
19 staff/founders and 14 board/advisors? No wonder it took them 3 years to get to beta with a fancy to-do app -- too many cooks in the kitchen!
(on closer inspection, not everybody on the list has something to do with the app, they also list their chef, a "coordinator" (whatever that means), and recruiters and sales folks)
with all kinds of ex-FB and ex-Googlers (and an ex-Palantir and Yelp) including data scientists, mathematicians and machine learning folks, I have a feeling they must have more in store than what they show here:
http://asana.com/2011/05/new-asana-intro-video/
And which Trello does much better.
If not...this is way too heavyweight a team.
Oh, and a $9mil round.
So I worry whether or not there is an actual underlying business model that can sustain such a large team.
Something in there just does not add up.
but three years to implement a todo list suggests they had a lot of fun with it along the way....
However, that's from a quora post written almost a year ago. We'll have to wait and see.
http://getflow.com and http://trello.com seem to have stolen their thunder.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2011/09/13.html
Answers: promised free as is, possibly freemium features later (7th item):
http://blog.trello.com/trello-common-questions/