“I’m glad we’ve learned from our tech bubble mistakes.” – Michael HS

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The Woolworth building, an architecture and art masterpiece (and home to Control Group!), will be painted red on Thursday March 29th in honor of two creative individuals, Barbara Kruger and Bernard Tschumi, an artist and an architect, whose work has marked an epoch in radical transformations within their fields. The artists are being honored as part of Storefront for Art and Architecture’s Spring Benefit, which will take place at The Woolworth Building and will celebrate the organization’s dedication to promoting radical and alternative positions in art and architecture. The event will include cocktails, hors d’oeuvers, building performances and an “almost” silent auction.

There will be two building performances as part of the event: Citizens of No Place and On Top of the Woolworth Building. Citizens of No Place is an installation in the Woolworth Building Bank Safe designed by Jimenez Lai that will showcase 10 stories emerging from within the safety boxes inside the magnificent vault of the building. On Top of the Woolworth Building is a tour guided by Roy Suskin, the unofficial historian of The Woolworth Building, where intrepid visitors will be able to go to the top of the building terrace, which was opened to the public until the start of World War I and has since closed, to enjoy the most ancient wrap-around views of New York City.

The silent auction, currently available online for preview and bids, includes works by artists whose work resonates with the spirit of Storefront: defying geographic, ideological and disciplinary boundaries to address the most poignant issues of our time. Inspired by the event’s honorees, artists participating were asked to participate in the Red/Read auction by donating works they feel resonate with any of the words in the auction’s homophonous title. Artists include: Vito Acconci, Dennis Adams, Erieta Attali, Daniel Arsham, Iwan Baan, John Baldessari, Gabriele Basilico, Phong Bui, Beth Campbell, James Casebere, Matilde Cassani, Peter Eisenman, Tony Feher, Haas & Hahn, Anthony Hamboussi, Steven Holl, Patrick Jackson, Louis I. Kahn, Rem Koolhaas, OMA, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler, An Te Liu, Antonio Muntadas, Shirin Neshat, Mikael Olsson, Roxy Paine, Lucy Raven, Pedro Reyes, François Roche, Cordy Ryman, Fanny Sanín, Tomas Saraceno, Gedi Sibony, Xaviera Simmons, Mikhael Subotzky, Stephen Talasnik, Marjan Teeuwen, Bernard Tschumi, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, Lawrence Weiner and James Welling.

The Benefit committee includes some of the most prominent local and international art and architecture figures of today, including Liz Diller, Hal Foster, Bjarke Ingels, Jurgen Mayer, Keller Easterling, Juan Herreros, Beatriz Colomina, Enrique Norten, and Paola Antonelli, among many others.

Control Group is a proud supporter of the Storefront for Art & Architecture, and our CEO Campbell Hyers is VP of the Storefront’s Board.

#whyisthewoolworthred

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Studio of the Future: Media Production Workflow in the AWS Cloud

Join us for a Webinar on March 29

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/118143495

With massive files sizes, multi-terabyte storage and asset management needs, and distributed teams, the benefits of cloud computing in media production are extremely compelling.  Many organizations are already using AWS for their media production workflows, and even more are taking a closer look as the platform and supporting technologies evolve to accommodate additional media production needs.

Join Dave Rocamora, VP of DevOps at Control Group, Charlie Miller, Associate Partner, Media & Entertainment at Control Group, and Mark Ramberg, AWS Business Development Manager as they discuss the media production roadmap for the Studio of the Future.  Hear how approaches to Storage, Transcoding/Encoding/Rendering, and Distribution can be optimized with AWS in a pay-as-you-go model.

This webinar will also provide architecture guidance and highlight vendors and AWS products that will help studio managers, production managers, and IT leaders understand how AWS can be used to power the Media Production Studio of the Future.

Title: Studio of the Future: Media Production Workflow in the AWS Cloud

Date: Thursday, March 29, 2012

Time: 3:00 PM – 4:15 PM EDT

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.
System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server
Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.5 or newer

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Nick Colvin, one of our senior account managers at Control Group, is a member of the Gamelan Kusuma Laras, a NYC-based gamelan band.  Gamelan is an Indonesian musical ensamble featuring a variety of instruments such as metallophones, xylophones, drums, gongs, bamboo flutes, and strings.

Gamelan Kusuma Laras will be performing at the Asia Society with Ki Purbo Asmoro, who is considered the best dhalang puppet-master in the world, along with his group Mayangkara.

It’s not the sort of experience you get many opportunities for outside of Java, Indonesia.  So check it out!

Event Details:

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Microsoft released an anti-Google Apps ad.   It spread around our office, which sparked some conflicting opinions on GApps.  (We pretty much stand united on our opinions of MS.)

Dave:  I guess MS is mad about Google Apps. Haters gonna hate.

Damien:  As Colin can attest, I also dislike Google Apps. And, webmail sucks. I should qualify – nothing that happens in my browser can compare to a dedicated piece of software. Currently. Count me as a hater.

Damien: Also, that ad is embarrassing.

Brian:  I dislike google apps… The moonlighting reference is totally dusty. Who will they  bust  next? Herve Villachaize?

Colin:  Sorry, I can’t bring myself to watch a Microsoft ad.  Yes, there are some things I miss about Outlook/Exchange – the inline autocorrect is one of them. But they are so minor compared to what I dont miss about them:

As a former Exchange Admin – Hardware, backups, corrupt backups, full tapes, incremental backups, log files filling up drive space, virus protection, spam, power outages, cooling, failed UPSs, more ‘rack space’ (under a desk) directory harvest attacks, patches, store limits, mailbox limits, attachment limits, limit exceptions, recovering DB white space,recovering DBs, exmerge, ESEutils, (/r)  repadmin, more equipment, desktop patches, cached mode bandwidth madness, decentralized topologies, remote access, mobile access, mobile access servers… I remember one patch revision we had – if you put a period in the subject line of an email it would bring the whole server down.. I think that was 5.5
As a business owner – see above.
As a user, I love the fact that anywhere I go, there’s my mail. The kids just starting out will soon not know what a mail client is, and when Damian and Dan M retire, there will be none left to tell the tails.

Michael: +5

Damien:  Really? Sounds to me like you’re describing the mail app on my phone. Which most certainly is not web mail.

Dave:  Wild tech prediction: very soon (next 2 years?) there will be absolutely no difference between a native app and a web app. Even using those terms will seem archaic.

Sholom:  Totally agree with Dave  (I can’t bring myself to +1 yet, I am old school)

Alex: I wouldn’t say I’m a Gapps fanboy, but I use nothing else, and I’m happy. (Maybe I just want to get as far from my mainframe roots as possible.) I almost never use a thumb drive, or any other physical portable. So for me, +1 to Dave’s point, +1 to Google, +1 to Chromebook/Macbook Air/etc.

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Our office view of the Giants’ Parade… (my that’s quite a long toilet paper streamer!)

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Our very own Josh Alexander will unveil his most recent work at the Giacobetti Paul gallery in Brooklyn from February 2-29. In his exhibition, INWARD, Josh presents a visual narrative of human emotions through the use of color, texture and shapes. The show will include several series of work, including collections of emotions, scars, and abstract figures. In his new works, Alexander captures honesty in introspection ­­ and reveals his continual influence from human nature.

Exhibition: February 2 – 29, 2012

Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Sunday, 12-6

Giacobetti Paul Gallery is located in Dumbo at 111 Front Street on the second floor in Gallery #220.
The best way to get there is the F train to the York Street stop, down the hill a block and left a couple of blocks. The building is at the corner of Front and Washington.

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CG Partner Scott Anderson scored some of the music for Famous Person Talent Agency: Pearls of Asia, a Sundance nominated film!  He’s headed to Park City for the Festival tomorrow.

Congrats Scott!  (And good luck.)

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Colin notified Zappos on Thursday that there was a security issue with their site.  Check out the email thread…  It seems like they weren’t aware of the breach at the time.

On Thu, 12 Jan 2012 18:31:15 -0800 (PST), c….@gmail.com wrote:
(Sent from http://zeta.zappos.com – the Zappos of Tomorrow (today!))
Contact By: email

—– customer message to follow —–

Hi there,

My browser detects the log in fields on you site as insecure. – I proceeded against this warning and I when I tried to check out none of my crdit card or shipping info was present – this info has always been a part of my zappos account and I am suspicious why the site would ask for me to
re-enter it.

Could you please have someone take a look at this?

Thanks,
-Colin

On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 5:54 PM, Zappos.com  wrote:

Hi Colin,

Thank you for contacting the Zappos VIP Customer Loyalty Team. I hope you’re having a fantastic day so far!

I am very sorry that we have worried you. Our awesome (and quite hunky) security staff will go to great lengths to ensure the safety of our customers payment information. Not only are we PCI compliant, not only do we encrypt connections using SSL technology, we also encrypt payment information traveling within our company as well so that even our employees can’t view it. Lastly, all payment information is encrypted while in storage within a network that is firewalled off from the rest of the company and the internet. We have even submitted a patent request for the unique and stringent way we’re protecting credit card data!

We saw some off and on hiccups with our site today and one of them was that information, both shipping and billing, were not appearing in accounts. It is not gone, for some reason it was just not displaying correctly. This has since been corrected and we should be good-to-go!

I hope this helps clear up any concern, Colin! Please let us know if there is anything else we can assist you with, we are in Las Vegas so the lights are never off!

Have a terrific day!

Your friend at Zappos,
Kelsey W.
Zappos Customer Loyalty Team

On Sat, 14 Jan 2012 08:46:49 -0500, “Colin O’Donnell” <c….@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Kelsey,

Could you also have you security team look in the “Insecure Login field detected”? this error was produced by my chrome password manager extension
www.lastpass.com

I believe this warning relates to the page being SSL encrypted, but the login fields coming from another non-encrypted source. – I actually abandoned my shopping cart and will not proceed with the purchase (or
future ones) because of this warning.

Thanks,
-Colin

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Zappos.com <cs@zappos.com>
Date: Sat, Jan 14, 2012 at 9:56 AM
Subject: Re: Security concern
To: c….@gmail.com

Hi Colin,

Thank you for contacting the Zappos.com Customer Loyalty Team. I apologize for the delay in responding to your email.

I can see you are a VIP customer and it would be my pleasure to assist you!

I apologize for any confusion or inconvenience caused. Unfortuantely, you may have received the error message because of compatibility issues with the Chrome browser on our site. I have heard of other customers having issues with our site when trying to use the Chrome browser, as well. You may want to try placing your order with another browser to see if you still receive the same error message.

For your reference, I’ve included a link which will direct you to our     Zappos.com Safe Shopping Guarantee, Secure Shopping, and Privacy Policy. Please click the link below to view:

http://www.zappos.com/protecting-your-personal-information

I hope the information provided helps you. If you have any additional questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us at any time. We are here for you 24/7. Have a wonderful day Colin!

Thank you,
Kesh
Customer Loyalty Representative

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A few weeks ago I was in the Anthropologie store in SoHo looking for specific dress.  They didn’t have it in my color/size so I asked the salesperson if she could see if another store had it in stock.  She said that they could order it and ship it to me for free right from the store and save me the trip.  Sweet!

Then she directed me to wait in a very long, holiday-time-in-New York City-sized line.

Twenty minutes later I finally reached the cash wrap.  To my surprise, the cashier pulled out an iPhone from her pocket, scanned the barcode of the sample dress with it, scrolled to the right size and color I was looking for, swiped my credit card with an attachment on the phone, and I was on my merry way.  Sweet?

Not so much. Why even bother with the iPhone and all of its wonderful functionality if I still had to wait in line for 20 minutes?  Isn’t the whole point of a mobile device its mobility? I couldn’t believe how much of my time they wasted when they just didn’t have to.

It’s like someone at Anthropologie said, “Hey, iPhones are cool!  Let’s get them so we can order stuff for customers direct from the store so they don’t leave without paying for something.  The end.”  There seemed to be no consideration of the iPhone’s real value to the customer experience.  To me, they could have used a catalogue and rotary phone and it would not have made a difference in my experience.  The cashier had the power in her hands!  Unfortunately, the salesperson on the floor was the one who should have had it. (Or hell, I could have had it!)

We see this all the time these days.  Companies buying the hot, new technology and using it in the same cold, stale way they’ve always done things.  In this case, it’s not only a waste of money, it’s damaging to the customer experience.  As companies start implementing technology that’s familiar to consumers, missteps like this become more obvious and frustrating and could actually damage the brand.

Put it this way, if there was no iPhone and they had to use an inventory management system I knew nothing about, I wouldn’t be writing this blog post. But I have an iPhone and I know why it’s awesome– instant gratification.  And so here I am venting about Anthropologie making me wait in line for 20 minutes despite having an instant gratification device right there in her heather grey, merino wool pocket.

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