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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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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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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The automotive lineup for CES 2012 next week includes the debut of the Ford Evos concept car, a sensor-rich vehicle that is designed to connect to the cloud, all for the benefit of user experience. What a great approach! Why aren’t all occupiable spaces, including cars, designed like this? Let’s look at the car concept. What do the cloud and sensors bring to driving experience? In short, it could make driving as forward-thinking as an iPhone. The concept car features include connectivity with entertainment and content; energy management based on environment and locality; parental controls; and smartphone integration. Other auto companies are working on similar ”cloud connected” and sensor-rich concept cars, and it’s hard to knock any of them for taking another five years — the estimated time to get real vehicles into showrooms — to perfect the technology. I can’t wait!

That said, during this five-year span, countless buildings, schools, Starbucks, Walmarts, etc. will be built without the forward-thinking technology frameworks for really enhanced user experiences. There are sensors, sure – like temperature management, which can effect productivity by gigantic numbers. But why is it not pervasive and evident, in ways that people can really notice and appreciate? Is it cost? Is it the building process? Is it the profit model? Maybe it’s all of these, but if there is meaningful benefit to user experience, shouldn’t the architect be thinking about technology frameworks – the way they think about new exotic building materials that only they have access to? It should be noted that it isn’t only architects that can leverage these tools and frameworks – retail marketers, advertisers, product managers, and property owners can reap benefits.  But architects have more opportunity to thread infrastructural thinking into the program and design of the space.  (I have spent much of my career working in both architecture and technology, which is why I pick on architects.)

What could an architect do with a rich technology infrastructure like the Evos concept? I’m open to suggestions, but the answer is likely a combination of the internet of things (sensors and other hardware), my digital self (i.e. Facebook, Linkedin, and particularly smartphones, which are broadcasting all the time), a robust web-services community, and great user experience design.

Here are some things that it’s not: The Jetsons, where everything has a robotic arm. It’s also not exactly “responsive architecture,” at least the physical part where buildings deform to meet changing conditions or provide some interactivity. And it’s not a marketing element, like lobby displays, although the best ones, like the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, are beautiful and certainly benefit user experience.

If not robotic arms for better services, then what? We can use tech infrastructure to augment and improve the delivery of services. A great example is the gate redesign work that’s happening at some of the major airports. Why should the airport gate look like a bus station and serve terrible food anymore? OTG Management, an innovative airport food and beverage operator, has revolutionized the gate holding area by making major restaurant improvements (actually good food) and extending that enhanced experience throughout the terminal with food delivery service via iPad-based menus and ordering systems, along with charging stations and comfortable seating. Now travelers are able to relax and dine from any seat.

Also, instead of deforming a building physically, perhaps we can deform it digitally. Shopkick allows a retailer to install a small transmitter that can communicate with local phones. Shoppers can pull out their mobile devices and get rewards and offers based on their digital and physical histories. Invisible to those that don’t want it, but a new experience for hardcore shoppers.

Instead of “screensaver” signage for effect — again, some are beautiful — perhaps we can conform the content to the viewer base. Techstars startup Immersive Labs is developing an outdoor advertising technology that uses cameras (as sensors) and facial recognition to tailor content to viewers, as in Minority Report. Not everyone wants “billboards” at their school or hotel, but this same capability is a fantastic tool for user experience design.

These aren’t the end-all, be-all examples but useful data points. There are many. For instance, Walmart Labs is making lots of social and mobile aquisitions – Grapple and Small Society, and I haven’t seen the new master store…but then again, I don’t get to Walmart much living in Manhattan.

For most users, this sense of super connectivity could be disturbing. As mentioned above, it’s going to be up to the designer, particularly the user experience designer, to turn this potential nightmare into a pleasant dream. User trust is essential – see Toby’s article on 5 Practices for Securing User Confidence for more.

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Control Group has a culture that attracts certain kinds of people. Sure, the culture changes as the company does, but there are certain things that definitely stick from iteration to iteration. I think that our acceptance and interest in innovation is one of them.  I think that we should all be innovating. Everyone has something to contribute, no matter what your title or role is.

So as an FYI, R&D is open to everyone and we will be scheduling more of those drive-bys to accommodate more schedules and interests.

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I was recently asked to create a reshare of a SAN volume for a client. I selected the file sharing protocol SMB because we can control what permissions are applied to new files and folders. This functionality is especially important since there’s no centralized authentication system to coordinate permissions within this setup. Unfortunately, an apparent bug in the Server Admin GUI for OS X Server 10.6.8 made this goal far more difficult to achieve than just clicking a few options.

The prescribed method for controlling newly created file and folder permissions is to select one of two options for “Default permissions for new files and folders:” under Protocol Options. I wanted all new items to be fully open to everyone, so I selected the option, “Assign as follows:”, and chose “Read & Write” for Owner, Group, and Everyone. A bit of testing showed that this adjustment was ineffective. Everything was still being created with the default permissions of r/w for the owner, read-only for everyone else (i.e., 744 for files, and 755 for folders). Replicating this setup on another server showed that the problem was not unique to the original machine.

Thanks to the aforementioned UNIX layer, I had another way of achieving my goal.

Although it’s found in the same place (/etc/smb.conf) as other UNIX flavors, OS X’s smb.conf file is a unique beast. Note the following comment at the head of the file:

; Parameters inside the required configuration block should not be altered.
; They may be changed at any time by upgrades or other automated processes.
;
; Site-specific customizations will only be preserved if they are done
; outside this block. If you choose to make customizations, it is your
; own responsibility to verify that they work correctly with the supported
; configuration tools.

Scanning through the file showed that there was no entry for the SMB reshare that was currently being served. However, running the command testparm showed that there was indeed a configuration entry for it:

[Volume_Name]
comment = Volume_Name
path = /Volumes/Volume_Name
read only = No
strict locking = Yes

What the heck? Where is this mount coming from? It turns out that OS X Server is pulling share information from an auto-generated file - /var/db/samba/smb.shares. However, we’re clearly not meant to alter this file, as per the leading comment it includes.

The trick is to include our share specific permissions settings at the bottom of /etc/smb.conf under an entry for the volume name. Ergo, you’d add the following:

[Volume_Name]

create mask = 0777
directory mask = 0777
force create mode = 0777
force directory mode = 0777

You’ll obviously want to adjust the included entries and their relative settings to suit your security situation. Also, note that the section name must match the entry listed by testparm for the association to work.

Additionally, I found that I had to include a setting to disable UNIX extensions for everything to work. Your mileage may vary. Rather than edit the untouchable global block, I added another section at the bottom of smb.conf in the following manner:

[global]

unix extensions = no

Curiously, SMB-attached users will see everything as being owned by them, with no access to anyone else:

-rwx——  1 administrator  staff      0 Nov 22 16:46 test_via_smb

Fortunately, this is only for appearances. In reality, new files and folders are being created as specified. Here’s the same file viewed from a fibre attached workstation:

-rwxrwxrwx   1 <uid>            wheel     0 Nov 22 16:46 test_via_smb

Hopefully this bit of knowledge will save someone else some time. Systems administration is ultimately a group effort!

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Bought something at the Apple Store on West 14th Street yesterday and tried the new Apple Store app for self checkout. Launch the app and it recognizes you’re in a store (GPS? SSID? Geo-fencing?). A special interface appears within the app, you click the EasyPay button and take a pic of the barcode on whatever you’re purchasing. Pay with your Apple ID (same as iTunes account) by typing your password. Your receipt appears on screen so a sales rep can give you a “paid” sticker.

Pretty slick. Apple’s got something incredibly powerful with their Apple ID system tied to customer credit card info, and they’re one of the only big players in the space that has both physical and online stores. Amazon’s got this down (duh) but not so much for offline purchasing. Facebook and Google are trying to figure out how to monetize offline purchases too, but seems like they’re playing catch up here.

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If you replaced your runbook with a puppet recipe, spun up a dev environment for breakfast, moved your production infrastructure to AWS, and have a few Arduinos on your desk… we want to talk to you.

Who are we? Just some geeks building the next. next thing and having a blast along the way. We work on dozens of projects every year, using the latest tools and inventing them when they don’t exist yet. We’re super busy creating new infrastructures for our clients, supporting our developers, and working on our own R&D. Your networking, database, storage, cloud, and hardware hacking chops will be challenged and honed.  Since DevOps is an emerging discipline, we’re writing the playbook as we move along.  So we’re looking for someone who lives and breathes this stuff– not necessarily the person with the most experience.

If your interested in joining our team, send us your resume or LinkedIn profile. (GitHub account and OSS contributions will also get our attention!)

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For the same reason the world is mostly shunning the idea of a touch screen monitor, they will likely shun this as well. It drags out the motions needed to complete a task, even simple ones. With the Twist, they mention that you bend the phone towards you to zoom in on a pic, or do other twists and contortions to do things like change music tracks, adjust volume etc. The first and most obvious problem with this is that you need two hands to do pretty much any of this. The “old fashioned” way can more easily be done single handed. It’s like the large touch screen monitors. It’s easier to work with a mouse and keyboard where you can drag files and folders around with the flick of a wrist, rather than extending your arm out to touch an icon, then make a streak across your monitor to drag it from one side to the other.

There will certainly be useful applications for this kind of technology, most likely in the medical field (all crazy cool tech seems to end up there.) Phones will benefit most by using the technology that makes the phone more flexible to prevent shattered screens and broken components. In the end, it’s just another attention grab by Nokia, a company that once dominated the mobile market with an iron fist, has over the last half decade slipped into the role of a curmudgeonly old hermit telling those damn Android kids to get off his lawn.

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Our design and user experience team had some strong opinions on the matter. This was our email thread today:

Max Z: This guys makes a couple of very good points (although I don’t agree with his overarching theme). I think the problem is simply one of consistency. Calendar on the iPad looks like its physical counterpart, while Calendar on the iPhone does not. However, Find My Friends is an app that maintains its look on both with leather stitching. Then there’s Game Center, which attempts to hit on a playful theme with a green felt background and serif fonts, while iBooks has fake pages that flick across the screen. This just needs to be fixed.

The part where I don’t agree with him is the tangent he goes on when addressing Apple’s advertising, or regarding Apple’s use of mainstream media in its keynote events. Simply put, people know they’re watching advertising because…. they’re watching a commercial. No one drops their jaw when they realize that Batman is not a documentary of a caped crusader. Same thing goes for using Winnie the Pooh as the first book in an iBooks app.

Ultimately, the author forgets one thing. Apple’s primary target audience is American, and the majority of Americans don’t live in New York or San Francisco. The majority of Americans live in the rest of the country, and they’re not “technorati”, nor do they want to be. They like things that ARE mainstream. At the same time they are also human, so they like things that are pretty, things that feel nice in their hand, and things that are intuitive. In other words, mixing mainstream with unique, beautiful aesthetic is the perfect business strategy. That might just be why they’ve been able to sell a few of their products.

Hams: Another design debate about something Apple is doing?! F yeah, my favorite!

I think another key thing here is something everyone seems to be skipping around, and it’s one of my new favorite big words d bags I mean designers use: Ephemeralization. Apple’s industrial design strategy is different from their product design/development strategy because they both have different challenges and different goals.

Aside from the inconsistency of apps between devices Max outlined so nicely, the author seems to have an issue with the inconsistency in an iPhone’s industrial design and one of the apps on it, iCal. Because we’re designing in a time where our one slick singular device handles our communication, calendar, entertainment, shopping, etc. we have to stick to conventions and maybe even aesthetic cues (for now) that the majority audience easily recognizes from past life versions of each function.

If Apple were designing iCal as a hardware device that served a singular purpose, maybe we’d see a “true-to-calendar” design approach instead of a skeuomorphic take on our multi-functional iPhone. But we are not, because that would involve a hardware case you need to change each time you switch apps.

The industrial designers aren’t designing a calendar device, or a boom box device, or a bookshelf device– they are designing a pocket sized little electronic that takes the place of all these things for you, which requires a totally different design strategy than the utilities named above.

The product designers are designing what the majority audience right now understands as some of these things transformed onto a little screen in their pocket. This will always change and this is the benefit of multi-functional devices being able to update relatively easily. It’s not inconsistent, they are two different things that work together now.

I think the most interesting piece of this whole conversation is what happens when the majority audience doesn’t recognize torn sheets from the calendar anymore but rather this skeuomorphic take on it as their point of reference.

Ivan: It already happened.  My friend teaches elementary school children, and he told me that there’s no succinct  way to describe what the Save button is. This indicates Microsoft’s slavishness to history and precedent to me, whereas Jobs made it a point to do away with the past. (The Icon Garden is a prime example.)

Toby: Actually, folks (Apple users) won’t soon recognize the digital concept of a folder soon, either.
Apple is making a pointed effort to erase the desktop metaphor from computing in order to reify the place these tools have in all parts of our lives. Rather than being misappropriated office tools, they’re lifestyle enablers. Or some shit.
The future is all groups vs folders on Apple platforms. Springboard is the new Finder (and just when Finder was finally sorta working… and written in Cocoa!)

On the tactile metaphors – even though they botch it (book metaphor + scrollbar = puke) – Apple has been telling designers at WWDC and via the HIG and design guides to replicate tactile, real-world, “physical” objects in their designs since the iPhone first came out.

They really push to make the point to designers that the iPhone and iPad (and with Lion, the Mac) don’t exist – they’re just pieces of glass that become different physical objects when an app is launched.

Why they chose to blanket Lion in what appears to be denim is beyond me, though.

Chris R: see what i just did there

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