Speaking of Greg Maletic…

his post, “The Meaning of Disneyland,” captures qualities that I experienced in my last trip to Disneyland, but didn’t articulate.

DVD Review: Tilt: The Battle to Save Pinball

Speaking of product design, today’s convalescence (bad head cold) meant I could gorge on the DVD for the documentary Tilt and it’s copious extras. The movie focuses on the development of Pinball 2000, an attempt by Williams to salvage a dwindling market for its pinball games. I found out about the film through Khoi’s post [...]

Locating value in interaction design consultancies

One of the trickiest challenges I have is defining what kind of services firm Adaptive Path is. For the sake of this post, let’s say AP is a firm that designs for interactive media — websites, software, mobile phones, devices, and kiosks. Design for interactive media is a hot space right now, because of all [...]

A Book Only San Francisco History Dorks Should Read

I also just finished Wings of Cherubs, a book that uncovers the history of Pisco Punch, a San Francisco cocktail famous at the turn of the last century. I’d stumbled across Pisco Punch in an article from an old California Historical Quarterly titled “The Secrets of Pisco Punch Revealed” (reprinted here). I then traveled to [...]

A Book Everyone Should Read:: The Shock Doctrine

It’s long (500 or so pages), and depressing (all about how US-influenced monetary policy has wreaked havoc throughout the world), but don’t let that thwart you. Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine is an important book about forces that manipulate the world. Now, I am not an anti-globalization state socialist. I support free trade and the [...]

The most useful website for coordinating travel launched in 2007 is….

Tripit! Now, I’m guessing most folks, reading the post title, would have thought I’d say “Dopplr.” And don’t get me wrong — I dig Dopplr, and occasionally play with it. But, man, Tripit is *useful*. Now, it’s interface/interaction design is woefully mediocre — it’s often not clear how to engage in an action, the pages [...]

On the radio…

Two weeks ago I was interviewed by a producer from NPR about coining the word blog. It was for a piece on the 10th anniversary of the word “weblog,” which they ran today. (When you get to the page, click “Listen Now” — I can’t seem to find a direct link to the audio file [...]

Huh.

I’m using this holiday time to clear through some old links I set aside and never visited. One of them pointed me to the 1982 short film Arcade Attack. It starts off as a documentary about the rise of video games and the glory of classic pinball, and then, well, it gets weirder. Much much [...]

Brief Film Review: I Am Legend

Resoundingly mediocre. The movie was made because we now have the technology for a convincing and interesting abandoned Manhattan. Such shots in the trailer draw you into the film, which, sadly, isn’t able to deliver much more than that. Driving home, I shared with Stacy my frustration that, because this was a big budget Hollywood [...]

I now know…

…how Stacy will spend the holidays. Visiting the Paleo-Future!

keep looking »

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Links, thoughts, and essays from Peter Merholz