The open floor plan of modern offices has its roots in ideas first conceived in the 1950s. In essence, removing barriers and ensuring the continued proximity of workers to each other was expected to facilitate communication and idea flow. But a growing body of evidence suggests that the open office undermines the very things that it was designed to achieve.

In June, 1997, a large oil and gas company in western Canada asked a group of psychologists at the University of Calgary to monitor workers as they transitioned from a traditional office arrangement to an open one. The psychologists assessed the employees' satisfaction with their surroundings, as well as their stress level, job performance, and interpersonal relationships before the transition, four weeks after the transition, and, finally, six months afterward. The employees suffered according to every measure: the new space was disruptive, stressful, and cumbersome, and, instead of feeling closer, coworkers felt distant, dissatisfied, and resentful. Productivity fell.

The research and analysis continues. The New Yorker provides an interesting look at what we've learned about this new trend in workplace organization.

There have been lots of apps developed and released that facilitate listening to podcasts. Amazingly though, the software used to create podcasts hasn't evolved much over the years.

Many podcasters have spent the last week sharing how they record their shows, and while the hardware is fun to argue about, the software story leaves a lot to be desired. Casey Liss describes his software setup for recording ATP: Skype, Piezo, Skype Call Recorder, and Google Docs. Jason Snell recommends getting a microphone with a heapdhone jack to compensate for Skype's lack of local input monitoring. If you can stomach it, you can listen to Dan Benjamin describe the ridiculous lengths he's gone to to record multiple guests in real time, and he still ends up dealing with Skype artifacts. This is a professional podcaster with a half-dozen Macs dedicated to the task of getting reasonable audio from remote guests. Ugh.

Allen Pike has some interesting thoughts on the subject, as well as a previous article detailing the "fall and rise of podcasting". As an avid podcast listener, I agree the field is ripe for improvement. What do you think? And which podcasts do you enjoy listening to?

Hackaday is reporting on an interesting advance in the science of producing geopolymer concrete:

For all the things Romans got wrong (lead pipes anyone?) did you know we're still using a less advanced concrete than they did? Consider some of the massive structures in Rome that have passed the test of time, lasting for more than 2000 years. The typical concrete that we use in construction starts to degrade after only 50 years.

Researchers at Berkeley think they've finally figured it out with thanks to a sample that was removed from the Pozzuoli Bay near Naples, Italy. This could vastly improve the durability of modern concrete, and even reduce the carbon footprint from making it. The downside is a longer curing time, and resource allocation - it wouldn't be possible to completely replace modern cement due to the limited supply of fly ash (an industrial waste product produced by burning coal). Their research can be found in a few articles, however they are both behind pay walls.

Lucky for us, and the open source community at large, someone from MIT has also been working on perfecting the formula - and he's shared his results thus far.