I work many mornings from a coffee shop near my apartment before heading into the office.

When people come in for coffee, being Americans, they politely form a rigidly hierarchical queue. And being Americans in 2016, they almost immediately pull out their phone and start fiddling with it.

We’re less than a decade into the smartphone era, and the device has become so ingrained in our lives that spending a few minutes with our own thoughts is less compelling than what’s on our magic internet-connected pocket computer.

I mention this not to judge my fellow humans (for a... More

My friend Eric went viral this week.

That’s not a euphemism for some sort of dread disease. His Millennials to Snake People Chrome plugin became fodder for the Viral Internet Journalism Industrial Complex.

In reality, it’s actually pretty cool to suddenly see something you made referred to and linked all over the place. I was minorly internet famous because of UX from hell, a piece I did about bad UX on news sites. But it was but a mere fraction of the scale of his plugin fame.

His creation is a Chrome plugin that converts “millennials” and variations... More

The Apple Watch is very nice.

It’s nice to use. It feels nice on your arm. It looks nice, too, and is quite nicely built. It’s surprisingly nice to make phone calls from, and it’s a nice way to get notifications on the go.

The haptic feedback buzz feels nice when a new push alert pops in. The alert sounds are nice, and the digital crown has a nice smooth, precision feel when rotated. The inductive charger that effortlessly drops into place is very nice compared with the fiddly plug on a cell phone.

Even the packaging is nice. All... More