While these projects are mostly in concept-form only, it should give you some visibility into potential future advances that we could build for our customers and employees. We are going to ask you to vote for your favorite project, which we will then get ready to go live. So, go ahead and place your vote!

Our Development Department redecorated each row of their department with a sports theme....and then tested it with real, live sports action!

Development, or Dev, for short, is the department at Zappos.com that truly makes some magic happen on a basis that is quite daily, we gotta say. They build the Front and Back End of the website...and that is the simple explanation. If you want the 'more simplistic than necessary' explanation that I came up with, here you go:

"They type things into a black box on a computer screen, and then Zappos can sell you clothing through the computer screen."

I know, I know, that doesn't help. No one ever accused me of being smart in the ways of a Dev-er.

But I digress...This past week, the Dev Department were allowed 2 days to create and build whatever their hearts desired and all of the current projects that they are busy with were put on hold. Just to see what kind of Technological awesomeness that they could come up with to make our customer's shopping experiences better.

The Blogs Team crossed over into Dev to see what we could film without being reprimanded by Dev's Forces.

What you are about to see is Top Secret.

Pawel S. from our Development team shares his desk with us. I assume tea time comes after the nerf wars.

Russel and Brent decided they would humor us by Dressing like each other last week, and they definitely succeeded in doing just that! Brent is known for sporting tailored dress shirts, designer jeans and Boots. Russel is known for his vast collection of Sweatshirts, sneakers and his signature Large Calf muscles.

Brett Stuffed the back lower leg of his jeans to give himself that Original Russel form, While Russel made sure his Shirt was freshly pressed and fitted. They were both extremely flattered by everyone's response to their impersonations of themselves, and we were wowed by how well they played their roles!!!

Pawel is our mastemind behind the twitter.zappos.com page....and many other wonderful Development work.

Pat asks him about his work and his baby dancing abilities.

Our very own Techie extraordinaire, Pawel S., discovered a strange reaction between his beloved plasma ball that sits on his desk and keeps him company throughout the day (for those who can, see his SM picture) and his Apple computer - more specifically the Mighty Mouse. You see, Pawel discovered how to transfer the energy that the plasma ball emits in order to control the mighty mouse functions.

See for yourself! And, unlike most things that we do in this office and post on the blogs, this trick is safe to try at home.

See, I Told You Those Cats in Dev Were Magic!

Ok, so the Development team got a bad rep after the whole nerf gun scenario, and rightfully so, they did get a little carried away. Ok, more than a little carried away, they turned their area into a battleground and who so ever dared to enter was in for a few high speed nerf bullets to the body.

Well, it seems like the trigger happy Dev team has finally retired their nerf weapons - most likely in a location that is easily accessable - but none the less, innocent bystanders are free to walk in the Dev zone without needing a shield of some sort.

Behold, a video clip proving that Dev isn't all bad. You see, they're friendly and waving. For now. Muhahahahahaha.

The KY Dev group is 10 super heroes managed by Jon Jacobs.
In KY, our Dev team is comprised of 10 Dev-ers and they are led by the great Jon J. They sit in a little office writing codes in Perl, analyzing warehouse operations, investigating process inefficiencies, and starring at computer screens all day long. We decided to have a little fun and check out how hard they do work! This video shows what would happen in the event the warehouse actually did have an issue. Fingers crossed, we hope everything goes as smoothly as it has been!

Unable to accept defeat after their pathetic attempt to overthrow the Dev Empire, opposition forces have resorted to dirty underhanded acts of treason and propaganda.

In an attempt to "Spin It to Win It", opposition leaders published false depictions of what they claim to be the Dev Empire surrendering by raising a white flag. These false depictions provide a clear indication of how low they are willing to stoop. The poor attempt at Photoshopping a white flag into the hand of fearless Dev leader Brent Cromley leads one to suspect that they have drafted the children of the preschool next door to turn the wheels of their propaganda machine.

After repeated failed attempts at negotiating a peaceful end to this propaganda campaign, militant factions within the Dev Empire decided it was time to take action and provide a strong example of the consequences of resistance. The action was swift and decisive as small strike squad infiltrated the eastern DMZ into enemy territory and captured Brian K., a key member of the opposition leadership. After being found guilty of treasonous acts of propaganda Brian stood before the firing squad. Justice was served. It remains to be seen if this action has provided a strong enough example to those who seek to undermine the Empire.

So as a loyal soldier of the UX team I can stand behind the claim that Development lost the battle held this morning. While I am a firm believer that a war consists of more than one battle, the first battle does set the tone for the rest of the war. In the pic below you will see clearly the white flag being waved by those across the battle lines on the development side. All should bask in the glory of the victorious UX, PM, HR and Finance allied powers.

Fore score and several weeks ago our Dev team raised up a great army unlike Zappos has ever seen in order to claim the 2300 building for their own. Today it was PM, UX, HR and Finance teams that decided to join troops and to fight this great army of nerf gun nerds. Though their courage is something that all of Zappos should honor, their army was no match for the smoke machine and customized nerf weapons.

Today we all take our hats off and bow down to the new kings of the hill - Development.

Maybe once the Finance and Human Resources army gains it's strength back, they will strike back

Ever thought about walking to work? For some of us, I am quite sure, it wouldn't be too much of a big deal, specifically for those that live close to work. But for those of us that do not live close to work, it would most likely be quite an arduous task. Well, tell that to Shane Anderson.

Shane, who works in Dev as a software engineer, has been with Zappos since December of 2007 and has quickly become both a valued co-worker and friend to many. At the beginning of September, Zappos participated in the 8000 Meter Challenge, a 34 mile hike / race over three mountain peaks in a twenty-four hour period and Shane was a part of that. A couple of weeks before the hike Shane decided to walk to work.

“I was trying to think of ways to train for the eight thousand meter challenge with my busy schedule, so I started looking at biking to work and stuff like that, but then I asked myself what about walking to work, since it was more like a hike,” he reports. “It was kind of like an interesting thought and one of those wacky things that would be kind of cool. There was a coolness factor about walking to work from across town.”

Some may think that walking to work is nothing like a long hike, but when you take into account the distance and elevation change, it really does turn out to be quite an impressive task and great conditioning. Shane lives off of Hualapai and Ann Road, at the extreme north end of town near Centennial Hills.

“So, I looked it up to see how far it'd be,” he begins, “and it was about twenty six miles.” If that doesn't WOW you, nothing will.

“So, I wasn't too sure if I was going to do it,” he continues, “But then one morning I woke up early and I decided to just go do it and so I did it. It was really interesting. It is one of those things where you didn't really realize what the experience was going to be. I knew it was going to be hard, you know the whole walking thing, but the actual experience, what you see in different parts of town, it was really interesting.”

First off, here was Shane's route:

Left house at 4:00am, major cross street Hualapai and Alexander.
Pebble to work. Arrival at 10:20am.

Total time – 6 hours
Total distance – 26 miles

If any of us have ever gone on a walk, we can attest to how the smallest most insignificant things suddenly seem larger than life. “I was walking along and as I was looking down at the bottom of these walls I see they have these little pipes sticking out, you know, for drainage, and in each one of those there was like a spider, you know, spider webs,” Shane explains. “So, I looked into the spider webs and it was really interesting, you'd see these big black widows and some of the webs came way out, so I was way over on the edge of the sidewalk. So, it was interesting to see that they are all waiting for a meal.”

Shane also had an interesting epiphany when it comes to real estate as he was, again, coming off of the Sahara overpass. “As you go across the tracks there was one thing that really stuck out to me and that was a cardboard box with a pair of feet hanging out. And I was like. are they dead or what?

“It didn't look like rigor mortis had set in,” Shane says, “so I didn't feel the need to alert anybody. But you notice a few of those and it just got me thinking back to all the spiders because here you are laying on the ground, next to a fence, in a cardboard box and if I was a black widow that would be a perfect place to do a nest. By then the sun was coming up and I was thinking its gotta be hot under that.”

Through it all, from picketers on Paradise to people sleeping in the bushes on Tropicana and Maryland Parkway; from the giant blisters on his feet to his sweat soaked clothing, Shane did not regret the experience and even says he may do it again sometime when it cools down.

“This was real city stuff,” Shane concludes. And what better way to see it then on a leisurely twenty-six mile, six hour stroll from one side of the valley to another. Real city stuff doesn't get much better than that.

By Alfred L. (COO/CFO), reporting live from ground zero of no-internet anarchy at Zappos.com Headquarters.

We had a little Internet outage today at the Zappos offices for a couple of hours. I was told that some router's firmware puked, whatever that means. There was a time when we were able to put in a full day's work just fine without this thing called the Internet. Those days are officially over -- at least at Zappos. Since we couldn't access our news feeds, personal emails, and internet radio stations...I mean, our corporate emails, servers, and systems, we thought we would have a little fun in the process.

Our Finance team had been planning for a while to have a 10-key Olympics. For those who don't know, we wanted to know who is most proficient at using only their right hand to enter data with the numerical keypad. Pretty geeky stuff, but they had a blast because they are geeks. Given this world of edi, xml, and all sorts of electronic data transfer formats, we seem to still manually enter a ton of data. i guess every now and then smart technology just isn't so smart?

Speaking of smart technology, our development team had been slowly amassing an arsenal of low-tech Nerf weapons of mass destruction over the last few months. it began with small revolver guns with 6 Nerf pellets, but it had escalated to motorized guns with modified banks of Nerf pellets and rubber bands to make the pellets fly further. Since the Development team couldn't connect to their precious code and whatever backdoor games they'd put on our servers, they entertained themselves by shooting anyone who walked by their desks.

As with the rise of any oppressive power, a revolution began, and developed (no pun intended)into a full scare Nerf war. Our finance team invaded their area and just started shooting. I held the door open to the development lair and have scars on my back from all the pellets fired upon me.

Our developers retaliated in full force, pushed the finance team back, disrupted a peaceful gathering of 10-key olympians, and kidnapped a few hostages. An armistice was called when the war started to intrude upon conference rooms where real meetings were being had -- must be those low-tech merchants who don't need the Internet to have a productive meeting.

Others took a more solitary approach to Internet withdrawal.
Keith C. decided to use the time trying to beat his own top score on Bulls-Eye ball 2.
Johnny p. decided to catch up on some much needed shuteye. How does he sleep with the noise of Bulls-Eye Ball 2 in the background and the cries and carnage of his team members in the development lair?

oh, Internet is back up...back to work...got to make up for 2 hours of downtime!

P.S. If you like to work hard and play hard, send us a note and your resume to jobs@zappos.com.

P.P.S. To our investors, your blood might be boiling about the thought of our internet being down, but i assure you that our website was up and running during this outage and still taking orders from customers. ;-)

Las Vegas, NV--On Thursday afternoon, the rebels of Finance crossed the border into Dev. to attack in fear of a preemptive strike, but were eventually overwhelmed by the Dev Forces.

The attack was prompted by sheer boredom when the Internet went down for a short period in the office on Thursday afternoon. After much deliberation, they decided that the risk of a strike from Dev was too great, so the attacked with their large arsenal of Nerf weaponry.

But the size of the Dev army overtook them and they were pushed back over into their border 10 minutes after the invasion.

"They fought like toddlers, really. It was sad," said Lt. Alex K., in a statement to the Zappos.com Blog Team. "Next time, we're coming for them, and there is no turning back," he added.

Below is a video of the attack.