Conventional Wisdom is Neither Conventional Nor Wise

I don’t quite know what the title to this post means, but it came into my head when reading this column on a recent essay citing the 100 most influential papers in physics. It points out that for all the glamour that cosmology, quantum mechanics, black holes, and the like have been getting, what physicists [...]

My legacy.

I am the number one result for the the Google Search poontang. And that search term accounts for, far and away, the most visits on my site.

SHIT IS TOO HARD TO USE

I’m working on a project where I get to go into people’s homes and watch them attempt to set up an internet-enabled device (excuse the vagueness). And, without fail, they cannot. What’s interesting to me is how they fail — each time it’s different. Though often in the same part of the process, the detail [...]

A Revolutionary Take on ROI, Business Value, and User Experience

Today we posted Scott Hirsch’s essay on ROI Is Not a Silver Bullet: Five Actionable Steps for Valuing User Experience Design. This coincides with the release of Adaptive Path’s first serious research report, Leveraging Business Value: How ROI Changes User Experience, written by Scott, Janice, and Sara Beckman from Haas School of Business. This report [...]

The Old New Thing

I’ve been working in “new media” for 10 years now, beginning with The Voyager Company in 1994. Back then, it was all about CD-ROMs and multimedia, and bookstores were turning into ‘media outlets,’ and the press was eating up this “future.” Buzz buzz buzz. In 1995, I began working on the Web (for Voyager), helping [...]

What Jeopardy! Reveals About Cognition

Today’s NY Times runs a pretty good article on whether Ken Jennings, the Jeopardy!-million-dollar-winner (and counting) is a genius. It basically gives them an excuse to explore some issues of cognitive science, particularly those related to intelligence. Good stuff. Also, if you haven’t been watching Ken wipe the floor clean with the brains of his [...]

Goodies from Adaptive Path

Just a little post, reminding you all of some things we got going on, and discounts we’re offering for everything. On July 22nd (that’s next week), the J-J-Geegester does New York Tufte-style with a one-day presentation on The Elements of User Experience. Use the promotion code FOPM and get 15% off! Next month, the entire [...]

Photos from and Thoughts on Barcelona

I, seemingly like everyone else, adore Barcelona. This was my first visit, and it was too brief (only 3 days). It became very clear very quickly that the best way to see this city is to rent an apartment for a week or two (or four) and live the life. Being first time visitors to [...]

A Few Days in the Pyrenees

The mellowest, and possibly most delightful, part of our European tour were the few days we spent in Foix, a little town in the Midi-Pyrenees, about 50 km south of Toulouse. Our attraction to this region had two main causes: 1) paleolithic cave paintings (at Niaux), and 2) Cathar castles. We ended up specifically in [...]

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Links, thoughts, and essays from Peter Merholz