So a local cafe went out of business, the Marquet on Fulton at South Portland. I heard about it from a friend, figured it had something to do with the fact that there are now about 18 cafes in a three block radius (the changing face of Fort Greene!) and that they insisted on closing promptly every day at 5 pm, despite the fact that no one was back from work that early in the week and no one was up that early on the weekends (despite all the caffeine). No great loss, though they had some nice pastries.

So I’m across the street this morning at Provisions, getting a cappuccino and pain au chocolat when I ask the barrista there if he knows if the other Marquets (there is one in Cobble Hill, at least another in the Village) are open. No idea. I can see a sign in the window of the now shuttered Marquet and determine, after I get my morning beverage, to walk over there and see what it  says. But the light is changing when I get outside and the street is icy and it would take an extra maybe five minutes to cross Fulton and read the sign…

So I don’t. And the moral of the story? Well, if you work in digital publishing, like me, and you’re using a new technology (or two) like we are, you are haunted by the idea that if people have even the slightest technical difficulty getting to what you are offering, they won’t. They just won’t cross that proverbial street to get that information. And worse yet (this is what really makes for the insomnia) they won’t tell you they didn’t. They won’t fill out a little customer satisfaction form and say, “Your site sucks.” As Steve Krug put it in his usability bible Don’t Make Me Think (quoting his wife), “If something is hard to use, I don’t use it as much.”

Or maybe at all.

It’s all relative to the desire for the information, of course. I spent a long time yesterday trying to log on to Al Jazeera English‘s live stream. I had competition and couldn’t connect to their server, I reckon. Sometimes a lot of people want the same content, especially when things are blowing up.