I'm disappointed in the Internet today. (A short rant)

I'm pretty disappointed in the Internet today.  First, there is the Smashing Magazine article What Is User Experience Design? which leaves out about half of the discipline in its long discussion.  But I quickly forgot that when I moved on to some of the more acid posts that came out overnight.

First, this guy really hates content strategy.  And the commenters hate him.  Linkbait articles like this really is the armpit of the Internet, and we shouldn't encourage it by getting all worked up, as infuriating as it is.  (Also, how am I still surprised that there are angry people on the Internet? I should have learned by now)
And then, there is the "Aahhh!!! The sky is falling on our heads!!!" outrage over the new Gap logo.  Man, we design folk are an angry bunch sometimes, aren't we.  I did enjoy Mat Dolphin's plead to Bridge the Gap (See what he did there, with the wordplay and the such? Clever).
Anyway, so I should give Smashing Magazine a little slack, because for what it covers, it is a really exhaustive article.  And we should all just calm down a little bit.  I'm also not a fan of the new Gap logo, but maybe there should be a rule that we have to catch up on Lolcats and have a coffee before we freak out about someone else's creative work.  
Still, that guy shouldn't talk about content strategy like that.

Great quote on how important it is to focus on user needs, not features. (article via @clamhead) #UX

Buried in a long, honest article dissecting Wesabe's failure and Mint's success:

Mint focused on making the user do almost no work at all, by automatically editing and categorizing their data, reducing the number of fields in their signup form, and giving them immediate gratification as soon as they possibly could; we completely sucked at all of that. Instead, I prioritized trying to build tools that would eventually help people change their financial behavior for the better, which I believed required people to more closely work with and understand their data. My goals may have been (okay, were) noble, but in the end we didn't help the people I wanted to since the product failed. I was focused on trying to make the usability of editing data as easy and functional as it could be; Mint was focused on making it so you never had to do that at all. Their approach completely kicked our approach's ass.

(From Why Wesabe lost to Mint)

Focusing on easy-to-use features are the table stakes of user experience design. Figuring out how to meet user needs in new ways that reduce their cognitive load? That's where the magic happens...