natasha's corner

A lot has been written about the recent announcement by Netflix that they will be increasing their plan prices by as much as 60%. Clearly, this backlash was not unanticipated by Netflix – according to David Pogue: Netflix knew that there would be a nasty backlash, and has already taken the subscriber defection into account [...]

This is a map of the route my package took to arrive via FedEx: I never would have guessed that the best way to get something from Pennsylvania to Boston is through Tennessee. But then, geography was never my strong point. (Memphis must be FedEx City.)

A while ago, I decided to pre-order a book from Amazon for the first time. The book was Confessions of a Public Speaker by Scott Berkun and it’s the first time I remember being really excited about a non-fiction book coming out. The thing is, I’m cheap, so if Amazon says I only have to [...]

This post has been moved to my new blog, Uncharted. Please continue the discussion there. It’s been a couple of weeks since our round of usability tests at the SAP BusinessObjects User Conference (rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it?) and I wanted to share a couple of thoughts about the experience. This was the [...]

I’ve been a long-time subscriber of Rhapsody’s music service (since 2005), but recently I decided to switch because of many little annoyances that finally made it almost unbearable to use. I may do a Rhapsody vs. Napster comparison at some point in the future, but today I thought I’d share my experience with trying to [...]

The new Wolfram|Alpha “computational knowledge engine” is the coolest thing I’ve seen in a long while. My first impression was that this was just a big fancy calculator to help people solve NP-complete problems and complex differential equations and whatnot. Not that this wouldn’t be impressive in its own right, but it’s not exactly something [...]

Taken at the "Importance of Presence in Presentations" session at the UPA Boston Mini Conference.

Many thanks to those who attended my presentation on “Connecting with Developers to Expand UX Influence” at the UPA Boston Mini Conference today. There were many excellent questions and I hope everyone found the presentation useful. You can download the slides here (in PDF form) or here (in PPTX form).

Don’t be fooled: this is NOT a ticket. Read my Delta horror story here.

I just got off a strange phone call with AT&T customer service. They called my phone and asked to speak with Nick. I said that I was his wife. The woman on the line then proceeded to explain how they would like to ask Nick a few questions regarding the quality of service he received [...]