RSA SecureID? "It's only wafer thin!"



This is Josh. He works in our Information Tech group. When he isn’t setting up computers or fixing problems, he’s humoring me by posing like a waiter as he delivers these cool little RSA SecureID computer security devices. Okay, the rest of this post is going to be super nerdy, so consider yourself warned.

So how do these work? Basically, every 60 seconds these little security devices flash a new unique number sequence that you use for logging into computer systems here at Zappos. It also has a very accurate clock built in so it displays the same number sequence during the same time interval as the “mother ship” which decides whether to log you in or not. In other words, if I type in 314271 at exactly noon, because the built in clock is super accurate, the mother ship will go “yep, that’s the correct sequence for noon today, this must be a legit login.”

If the clock was not accurate, the correct number sequence would not be displayed at the correct time. And when I typed it in, the mothership would go “hmmm, either this is not a legit login or John is typing really slow because he is at one of those infamous Zappos happy hours. In either case, I shall deny him access.” See, that’s why it’s called the mother ship.

Of course we don’t just type in the 6 numbers, otherwise if we either lost a SecureID or somebody swiped one, they could just type in the number! Each Zappos person who uses these also receives a personal code sequence that they type in along with the SecureID sequence. In case we forget, we also have this sequence tattooed on the bottom of our right foot.

And that’s all I have to say about that!

We had another product expo today. Yeah, life is brutal at the big Z. This time our Action Sports and Urban Mix Product groups combined forces and put on the biggest expo yet. Besides using the Training Room, they overflowed into the parking lot out back. Here’s what it looked like – a solid line of different brands as far as the eye could see!



We had DJ Wreck spinnin' on the ones and twos, b-boy breakers, a dunk tank, a giant grill with burgers and dogs, and check out this fun dance number starring Ashotta and Melissa and the big blow up guy from Lost. Yep, this is another one of my famous “lean to the left” videos.


The list of brands that attended today was pretty long! For Urban Mix we had baby phat, Fila, Lexani, Lugz, Pastry, Pepe Jeans, Rocawear, Sean Jean. And for Action Sports we had anon optics, Circa, DC, Draven, Emerica, eS, etnies, globe, gravis, IPATH, KR3W, Lost, Metal Mulisha, O'NEILL, OSIRIS, QuikSilver, REEF, Rusty, SUPRA. Thank you one and all for a “sick” day!

We've got a lot of office and conference room renovations going on at Zappos HQ and I was literally stopped in my tracks by this brilliant decorative display in the Fashion area. I asked Jonathan how he decided to do this and he said it all started with the concept of “Sowing the Seeds of Fashion.” The next step was to visit many of the local thrift stores for materials. That’s where the neckties and the love seat (below) came from. Gardening sticks were inserted into the neckties to hold them up and then placed into clay pots stuffed with excelsior.

When Jonathan used the word “excelsior” I was like “isn’t that the name of a ship in the Royal Navy?”
He explained that it was also a filler material and is often used in gift baskets. Now I wasn’t questioning, but I was curious about this and besides being “curly wood shavings used as filler”, excelsior is also the motto of the State of New York with the meaning “still higher.” It is derived from the Latin “excelsus” which means “high.” It seems there also were a couple of HMS Excelsiors in the British Royal Navy and it is also a starship class name in Star Trek. Here’s another picture.



From left to right we have Anthony, Jonathan and Jason standing behind the mannequin. Anthony did most of the wall painting and Jason helped with the material selection and picture framing. Normally, the love seat is actually against the wall and would just be out of sight in the righthand foreground of this picture, ditto for the framed pictures of several fashion legends, including Jonathan’s favorite designer, Vivienne Westwood.

Great job lads!

The Zappos Merchandising team is working with ZU to put together a Zappos.com Edition of Monopoly. 5000 custom Monopoly boards will be created by Parker Bros. featuring Zappos.com and our Core Values, and will feature properties "sponsored" by many of our top vendors! The proceeds from the property sponsorship and sales of board game set will benifit The Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation.

Special thanks to Andy H., Richard Z. and Mark G. for putting this together! We're almost there! More info to follow!