What is “Communication”?

In the New York times article on the internet and socializing, we’re told that “57 percent of Internet use was devoted to communications like e-mail, instant messaging and chat rooms, and 43 percent for other activities including Web browsing, shopping and game playing.” And it made me think that a fairly arbitrary distinction is being [...]

When Data Makes You Say, “So What?”

The New York Times reports on a study about the internet and socializing. Guess what? The more time you spend online, the less face-to-face contact you have! Um, so what? The tone of the piece suggests this is a bad thing. You get statements like: “According to the study, an hour of time spent using [...]

The Review Emphatic with Peter Merholz

Couple nights ago we saw The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. I’d gone in with low expectations — I enjoyed The Royal Tenenbaums and Rushmore, but early notices suggested that Wes Anderson had gotten a little too precious for his own good, drifted a little too far away from people and emotions toward a world [...]

Movie Review: In the Realms of the Unreal

To witness Henry Darger’s art is to get immersed in his fantastical story of the Vivian Girls, spunky pre-adolescents fundamental to a war being fought between Christian Good and the Secular Bad. I first saw Darger’s work at SFMOMA about 5 or 6 years ago, and his vivid, candy-colored depiction of “The Realms of the [...]

Flickr Wondring

Lane and Nadav have been posting thoughts about Flickr, and I couldn’t help but throw my voice into that echo chamber. Lane is right when he says it’s about the pictures. He’s wrong that the network is simply the plumbing. That is, depending on his meaning of “network.” Those sites that truly succeed on the [...]

House of the Snoring Filmgoers

I liked Hero (though it went on about 30 minutes too long). I think Zhang Ziyi is beautiful. The reviews have been favorable, so I got a group of folks together yesterday to head out to see House of the Flying Daggers. It was terrible. It was unremittingly dull. It’s about 20 minutes worth of [...]

More on Best Cellars – Wine Store Design

Readers of peterme know I’m fan of Best Cellars. Business week has an interview with its founder, touching on subjects of classification, store presentation, the value of calling assumptions into question, etc. Worth a read!

Content Management Workshop – January 25

On January 25th, Jeff and I will be presenting a workshop on getting the most out of your current (or planned) content management system. We’ll be doing it here in San Francisco, at the new Adaptive Path office. It should be a great event, and I can guarantee it will be chock full of useful [...]

Hotel Room User Testing

A current project requires lab user testing in four cities in California. We knew that for the Bay Area, we could use our client’s office, but for L.A., Fresno, and Sacramento, what would we do? Our first impulse was to get a formal user testing lab — totally pro set up, one-way glass, lots and [...]

More on Media Obesity

It turns out I wasn’t the first to suggest an analogy between food consumption and media consumption. I had done a search for “media obesity” and didn’t turn this up before… But now it has risen higher on Google. Media Surplus and a thoughtful response.

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Links, thoughts, and essays from Peter Merholz