So the other day I was talking to a friend of mine and explaining a bit about what I do, basically the concept of Human-Computer Interaction. When I used this phrase, she started chuckling to herself — apparently she had watched the Daily Show the night before and seen a Samantha Bee piece on, um, taking a robot as a lover.

Yeah, that’s not quite what I meant by Human-Computer Interaction.

(You can see this video on Comedy Central’s site. Obviously it is not for the easily offended.)

I was reading Electronic Retailer, one of those free industry rags, at a break during the recent eTail conference, when a headline blared out at me from the page: “Study Shows That Nearly 25 Percent of Hispanics Subscribe to Mobile TV”

WOW, I thought. That is an amazing number for a technology that is so new. How could this many people be subscribed without this mobile feature getting more fanfare? Of course, this number is nowhere near true. It turns out that 23% of moblie TV subscribers are Hispanic, which, as you may have already guessed, means that far less than 25% of all Hispanics subscribe to mobile TV.

Talk about a quick way to lose credibility — Electronic Retailer quickly lost it with me.

According to the NY Times, 216 people bet actual US currency (on betus.com) that the world would end on 6/6/06. The site, of course, was committed to paying any winners: “Come rain, sleet, snow or apocalypse, our clients will receive their winnings,” a spokesperson said.

The learning here? While many web developers and designers are logical, web users are not.