Well, fellow internet users, wonder no more. As of today, Google is giving users the opportunity to “plan their digital afterlife,” with a new feature called Inactive Account Manager, according to their Public Policy Blog. This feature allows users to leave instructions for the management of their so-called “digital assets” after they die. So if you get bored of G-chatting and cleaning out your spam folder during office downtime, take some time to wrestle with your mortality. There’s an app for that!

The account manager can be found on the Google Account settings page. From there, users can instruct Google what to do with their Gmail messages and other Google data should their accounts become inactive for a certain period of time. Users can choose a timeout period of three, six, nine or twelve months. At this point, Google will send users a text message and e-mail a secondary address to make sure they are actually dead, and haven’t just, like, decided to go back to using hotmail or something (RIP, catlover1998@hotmail.com).

Once Google has verified that you are no longer of this earth, your data will either be deleted or sent to “trusted contacts.” So now is the time to think long and hard about which of your cyber-buddies you want to bequeath all your worldly digital possessions too. Also doubles as a great snub for someone that you've left out of your actual will!

As the post on Google's blog reads:

“We hope that this new feature will enable you to plan your digital afterlife — in a way that protects your privacy and security — and make life easier for your loved ones after you’re gone.”

Ah yes. Because nothing eases the pain of losing a loved one like being sent all their old emails.

It was enough to make even a Google employee jealous. Not that Google’s New York offices don’t have their own enviably cool visitors—Stephen Colbert, Lang Lang and Toni Morrison, to name just a few. Employees also get razor scooters. And pool tables. And arcade games. And subsidized massages. And free gourmet meals. And a full-service, full-size dessert truck permanently parked on the eighth floor.

These days, visitors to a New York office are as likely to stumble into a game of Ping-Pong as they are to find suited workers shuffling through a grim landscape of carpet tile and cubicles. Thrillist has a kegerator; building-mate Foursquare has shuffleboard and a beer of the week. Etsy’s Dumbo headquarters blends homemade coziness and high-end design so masterfully it could make an Urban Outfitters executive weep.

Until quite recently, such perks were considered the eccentric luxuries of 20-something tech prodigies, edgy advertising firms and cash-flush startups. Corporate America dismissed the cool office as a fleeting phenomenon. But the wild successes of companies like Google and Facebook have made even the stodgiest CEOs contemplate the potential benefits of video game consoles and French-press coffee. A Ping-Pong table in the middle of your office used to imply that you were run by a 24-year-old. Now a lot of companies want to imply that they’re run by a 24-year-old.

Indeed, the cool office has become a national fixation. And in the country’s collective imagination—an imagination fed by countless magazines, blogs and secondhand stories—it is a utopia of lofted ceilings and abundant natural light, where no one ever seems bored or blocked or fatigued (how could anyone be tired with both a nap room and an espresso machine?), where workers always appear to be seriously having fun, furiously exchanging ideas, or seriously having fun as they furiously exchange ideas. Even the after-work hours are better. Rather than rushing home to drown their sorrows in drink (like some mid-century suburban send-up), workers hang out in their hip, bar-like lounges, knocking back craft brews in celebration of yet another ridiculously productive day of creative cathexis.

In this way, the cool office goes so far as to suggest that the inherent tensions of the workplace—between labor and management, between our authentic selves and our professional selves, between working for love and working for money—can be overcome. It’s a paradise wrought by the Protestant work ethic, where creativity and massive profits can be merged painlessly, a delightful feedback loop in which greater happiness yields greater productivity yields greater happiness—salvation by way of Ping-Pong and Stumptown coffee.

Last October, French beverage conglomerate Pernod Ricard moved into an 82,000-square-foot space at 250 Park Avenue—a buttoned-up 20-story tower in Midtown that has traditionally been a great favorite of white-shoe law firms (Sullivan & Cromwell occupied the space before Pernod).

While the location and the building seemed an obvious choice for a huge international corporation, the distillery-chic space was not: exposed 14-foot ceilings, concrete floors, vast walls of brick and glass, plus a massive bar, a game room (foosball and pool) and huge terraces. If you overlooked the fact that it spanned the 16th through 18th floors of prime Manhattan real estate, Pernod’s office was more suggestive of a craft Brooklyn brewery or one of the many places where the company’s ubiquitous labels (Absolut, Malibu, Jameson, Beefeater, et al.) are consumed than a corporate headquarters.

“They all want some kind of cool vibe,” said Scott Spector, a principal at the Spector Group, the architectural firm that designed Pernod’s space, adding that even law firms and hedge funds are requesting the “factory-meets-art-gallery look.”
While the first cool offices started appearing more than a decade ago—Mr. Spector credited Deutsch advertising with pioneering the use of scooters for intraoffice transportation—there’s now been a fundamental shift in office design. What were once features found mostly at tech companies—open, collaborative areas, kitchens, game rooms—are becoming standard. Even traditional firms that grimace at the idea of clients catching them playing pool still want the hardwood floors and pendant lights.

“Cool has conquered all,” he said.

At the very least, it has helped fuel the growth of places like WeWork—a co-working company that started two years ago with the intention of catering to creative freelancers and startups with less than 50 people. The company now has five offices in Manhattan, with two more on the way at (Bryant Park and 222 Broadway), and three in California. And while some of that growth is connected to the thriving startup scene and the dissolution of the traditional economy—freelancers needing places to work—the company is increasingly being asked to accommodate larger companies in a range of industries, from modeling agencies to nonprofits.

“I definitely think that there is something that makes you feel more excited to come here in the morning and stay late at night,” WeWork co-founder Miguel McKelvey told The Observer when he took us on a tour of the company’s Varick Street offices in late February. Weak winter sunlight flooded through the 105,000-square-foot space. Decorative items were scattered about—a vintage bike here, a typewriter there—banishing the impersonal barrenness that is a hallmark of so many offices.

He pointed out a paper shredder that had been covered in a purplish-gray floral print.

“We thought, ‘We can’t put that super-ugly gray box in here,’” Mr. McKelvey said. “We would never stand for the ugliest, easiest solution. We always try to analyze things and say, ‘How can we make this look cooler?’”

A decade ago, workplace innovation revolved primarily around where people worked. Working remotely was all the rage, and “being able to work in your pajamas” was talked about as though it were one of the great hopes of humanity that could finally now, through the miracle of technology, be achieved. Companies contemplated the cost-
saving potential of vastly reduced work spaces, and workers welcomed the end of commuting and simpler child care arrangements.

But like other work-space panaceas before it, telecommuting proved less than revolutionary. (It’s worth noting that the cubicle, maligned though it is today, was seen as an innovative solution to the problems of the modern office when it first debuted in the 1960s.)

“Now innovation is all about what’s cool,” said Lenny Beaudoin, a senior managing director of CBRE’s global corporate services. Mr. Beaudoin, a workplace strategist who helps the real estate company’s clients revamp their workplaces to enhance productivity, is currently working with a number of traditional companies (a large bank, a San Francisco law firm) that want to create “cooler,” less traditional offices in happening neighborhoods.

“The new office is part hospitality, part retail. People work 24/7, and they want their workplaces to appeal to their lifestyles,” he said. “The idea of going into a high-rise and sitting in a cubicle all day, the tyranny of the traditional office, that’s going away. It’s about lifestyle integration.”

And why shouldn’t it be? Given that the BlackBerry has long since sullied the domestic sphere, aren’t we entitled to comfortable furniture and good lighting in the public sphere? Even the idea of the domestic versus the public sphere sounds quaint, a Victorian concept burnished in ’80s academic conferences more than something resembling the lived experience of professional workers in 2013.

Google has been criticized in the past for using its admittedly amazing amenities to lure workers into longer and longer days at the office. But its offices remain the envy of workers everywhere, because many Americans aren’t offered any trade-offs for their devotion to their desks, let alone a package of lavish, extravagant ones. The modern office is transforming into a worker’s everything—the place where she not only works, but eats, exercises, relaxes and socializes.

“A home away from home,” is how ZocDoc director of people Karsten Vagner describes the website’s Soho offices. Which struck us as slightly misleading—how many New Yorkers’ neglected apartments have two fridges and a freezer stocked daily with healthy snacks? Which is to say nothing of a game room and a hammock flanked by blow-up palm trees.

“More than once I’ve heard parents say, ‘Is this real?’ when they see the hammock,” said Mr. Vagner. “I brought my dad into the office last week. It was the first thing he wanted to do when he got off the train.”

Speaking with Mr. Vagner and company spokeswoman Jessica Aptman, it was striking how happy they sounded. When we grumbled about yet more snow in March, they told us how everyone at the office was Instagramming the snow from the office’s big windows.

“I think that people can change a company and a space can change a person,” said Mr. Vagner. “I know that if I’m sitting on my yoga ball and I can see other people, if I have plants or action figures on my desk, I’m going to be a lot happier and more productive than if I was isolated in a dark cubicle.”

Still, some of it seemed a little silly. When did workers really need a hammock?

“When don’t you need a hammock!” they exclaimed in unison.

Just the prospect of moving to a cool office is enough to make some workers giddy. Ryan Alovis, the CEO and founder of ArkNet Media, a midsize Long Island startup, was surprised at how psyched his 16 employees were when he told them they’d be ditching their traditional office in Valley Stream for a hip, college-campus-like complex in Garden City.

“They’re so hyped up, everyone’s freaking out,” he said. “I walked by my VP of operations and he showed me a pool table that they have at L.A.’s Hard Rock Cafe that he wanted us to get—every time you hit a ball, it either reveals a girl in a bikini or it looks like a ball of fire. The other day, someone showed me a robotic bar.”

There will not be the bikini/flame pool table or a robotic bar at the new office, but there will be a normal bar, a fitness center, a “coffee center, not just coffee,” a juicer and pizza parties. “You have to wow people,” said Mr. Alovis. “A juicer, a fitness center, a cafeteria—people expect this now. Tech workers are the new rock stars.”

And they have the Rock Band setups to prove it.

It should not come as a surprise that corporate America—its once-promised financial security and career stability having vanished—would be drawn to the cultural blueprint and anti-status ethos provided by tech. While tech’s DNA is fundamentally capitalist—create something new and make a lot of money selling it—the industry proved that it could not only make money and be cool at the same time, but that it could make money by being cool.

By following the path that tech forged, companies have an opportunity to remake their images along with their offices. Now companies talk endlessly of creating interactions, of CEOs getting right into the mix of things, of ideas circulating and flourishing in their open floor plans. As though we were all creative geniuses or industry trailblazers and office drudgery were a thing of the past. As though we could wipe out the thankless, unglamorous tasks that make up the entirety of some jobs right along with bad fluorescent lighting.

The cool office sells not only an image of a creative hotbed to clients, but perhaps more importantly, to employees. It invites them to see their job as a form of self-expression rather than rote labor, granting flexibility in exchange for loyalty and long hours. And worker bees have responded enthusiastically, taking to Instagram and Twitter to brag about their amazing workplaces. Some even pen boastful CNN iReports, like the recent one by an MKG employee that started “Our office is our playground” and described taking “goofy group shots” in the office photobooth.

There is something vaguely unsettling, though, something overwrought about the descriptions of all the fun being had: the Tuesday-night runs that “take off from the office and end at a local pub,” the spontaneous exercise breaks where employees can be found “shaking the sillies out in a no-judgement zone,” the craft nights with wine and cheese where everyone makes “holiday themed cards, or mugs, or whatever strikes our fancy!”

Is day-to-day office life really so thrilling that a photobooth is needed to capture all the precious moments? Since when is any workplace a no-judgement zone? (And why should it be?) Moreover, who really wants to sit around making mugs with their co-workers?

There is a cult-like undertone in this all-encompassing existence, in the blurring of lines between home and office, between personal time and work time, between employee and self. The cool office works to disguise the very basis of the relationship between company and employee: the exchange of money for work. Work is a lot of things, but this is its fundamental essence.

As architect Sam Jacob recently wrote in Dezeen, the rise of the fun office can be seen “as a denial of the very real power structures inherent in labour relations.” And “even more fundamentally sinister is the idea of work colonising the real spaces of intimacy and freedom: when your office resembles all the places that you go to escape work, maybe there is no escape from work itself.”

But for better or worse, Americans have always embraced that “you are what you do.” The idea that “you are where you work—literally” is new. For many of us, the cool office ministers not only to our immediate needs, but also to our fantasies: fantasies about the kind of people we would like to be, the jobs we wish we had, the lives we wish we were leading. We might not land that dream job, but the dream office could be within reach!

And yet, as much as the cool office can seem to matter, it can also matter very little. Of the many conversations that The Observer had with the haves and the have-nots of the office world—in the twinges and, okay, flashes of envy we sometimes felt—our thoughts returned frequently to what a Google engineer said to us, after describing a Vermont ski weekend the company had taken him on, Lang Lang’s visit, and a lunch of expertly prepared salmon and roasted Brussels sprouts: “At the end of the day, whether you enjoy your job or not is more important than getting roasted Brussels sprouts.”

But, he added, just so long as we were writing about cool offices, we should know that as good as New York’s Google headquarters are, “the truly awesome stuff is in Mountain View.”

kvelsey@observer.com

Mr. Allon: making hearts and algorithms throb.

Ori Allon, the charmed entrepreneur who has already sold one company to Google and another to Twitter, has been feverishly working on his third—Urban Compass. So far, Mr. Allon and founder Robert Reffkin won’t even say what Urban Compass does. But that air of mystery hasn’t slowed the company’s growth—they have raised $8 million from an impressive group of seed funders including Goldman Sachs, AmEx CEO Ken Chenault and Thrive Capital*. The start-up now has 18 employees and counting.

One of those 18 offers a clue to what Urban Compass will actually involve, and our guess is real estate. As first reported by The Real Deal, Gordon Golub, who was an Executive Vice President at Citi Habitats, left after 18 years to join Mr. Allon and Mr. Reffkin.

In an interview with The Observer, Mr. Allon said the idea for Urban Compass would be elemental. “I want to help people with their most important decisions. Anything from data collection to other services. So yes, real estate will be a part of it.”

Part of it?

“I want to help people find what they want,” said the dashing 32-year-old Israeli, who is so good looking that one commenter on The Verge wondered aloud, “Why is he even working? He should be getting paid just for being so handsome.”

Pressed to show a little more leg, Mr. Allon revealed a few more details, telling The Observer: “This is more of a real world problem that you’re trying to solve. It’s not a pure technology company. The other two”—referring to Orion, an algorithm he sold to Google in 2006 and Julpan, a social information tool he sold to Twitter in 2011—“were pure technology. Here, the operations side is very big. That’s why we have people like Gordon and Robert, who have a lot of experience.” Another co-founder, Mike Weiss, also comes from a real estate background, having worked in the real estate investment division at Goldman Sachs.

C’mon, Ori, can’t you give us a hint? “People will know very soon. We’ll have a beta version by the end of the quarter, which will be open to a limited number of people and by the summer, everyone will know what we’re doing.”

Startups are like professional sports—the world hears only about the one that becomes monetized, not the thousand that ended in heartbreak. Someone who creates two different companies that get bought by tech giants is about as rare as Bo Jackson playing pro football and baseball. And now Ori Allon is looking to become a three-sport athlete. Will he succeed? It’s tough to bet against a guy who’s done it twice, even if he won’t reveal the exact nature of the business.

But here’s something Mr. Allon will actually share. Mr. Allon isn’t trying to lure a tech giant this time, he is building something he hopes to run. “My main motivation is not to sell the company. I’m very happy with my previous companies, and I’m happy that those technologies are part of Google today and part of Twitter. But now I’m building a platform. A human network. And a lot of our success, hopefully, will come from this operation. We just want to make life easier for New Yorkers.”

*Disclosure: Thrive Capital is invested in several start-up companies. Josh Kushner, a Thrive principal, is also part-owner of Observer Media Group. Observer Media Group has no affiliation with Thrive Capital and the views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Thrive Capital or its principals.

Great Googledy-boogledy! (Youtube)

Google Analytics has done a fine job creating a series of humorous television spots--apparently targeted at British businesses--that shows what a Google Search would look like in real life. That is, if real life was a supermarket full of David Brent-type incompetents and a bureaucracy reminiscent of the one from Brazil.

Buzzfeed's Copyranter found the ads a little too sweet and sour for his taste:

The campaign by Google Analytics targeting businesses takes online interactions out into the real world via comical sketches. It's a creative idea, but it hits a wrong note for me simply because Google's own Search function is so inaccurate and frustrating as hell to use.

The response to Copyranter's issues are seemingly in the name of the series itself, "Google Analytics in Real Life." As in: "This is an example of how frustrating it is to use Google's own search engine."

Surely that was not the intention of these ads, as the text at the end reads "Shopping online should be easy. Discover what your customers are looking for" before fading into a logo for Google Analytics, but the jumbled message of the spots is an apt enough metaphor for the confusing mess of Google Analytics. How meta!

"Who is running for President?"

As several Twitter users have noted, many people don't seem sure who's running for President.

The query "who is running for president" skyrocketed in the past month on Google Trends, more than doubling the number of queries in October of this year. In November 2008, there were only 12% as many searches.

The top result on Google, a site called Election Central, lists Gary Johnson, Ron Paul, and Mitt Romney as "Republican contenders looking to unseat President Obama." Sorry, Jill Stein!

Good luck tonight, to Senator... Rombley? And the other guy, too.

Screengrab

Mayor Bloomberg's office has teamed with Google to create Hurricane Sandy: NYC. It's a handy "crisis" map that links to the latest N.Y.C. Emergency Management alerts, various city-related Twitter accounts and advisories about Hurricane Sandy from the National Hurricane Center.

Residents may be particularly interested in the map's color-coded evacuation zones--currently Zone A is under a mandatory evacuation order.

Here are Google's tips on how to best use the map:

• Zoom the map using either the on-screen controls or your mouse.
• Find additional layers in the Layers list, where you can turn them on or off. Scroll to see all layers.
• Zoom to an appropriate view for each layer by clicking the "Zoom to area" links in the Layers list.
• View selected layers in Google Earth by clicking the "Download KML" links in the Layers list.
• Share the map in e-mail by clicking the Share button and copying the URL provided there. The URL will restore your current view, including the set of layers that you have turned on.
• Embed the map on your website or blog by getting a snippet of HTML code from the Share button.
• Share the link on Google+, Twitter or Facebook by clicking the appropriate button in the Share window.

We've embedded the map below.

Eric Schmidt digs Roosevelt Island. (Matt Chaban)

It wasn't all politicos and power brokers at the ribbon cutting for the FDR Four Freedoms Park gathered at the tip of Roosevelt Island earlier this week. Cornell had a strong showing, too, since their new tech campus will be the park's neighbor to the north within a few years. Cornell president and jockey David Skorton was there, and so was Eric Schmidt, the Google executive chairman who is serving on a three-man advisory panel for the campus.

Wearing a natty tweed blazer and jaunty blue scarf, Mr. Schmidt was wandering just south of the sloping lawn, near the massive bust of the 32nd president that is a centerpiece of the park, when The Observer caught up with him. "I would say first it's probably the most beautiful new public structures in America today, it's so visually arresting," Mr. Schmidt said. He thought is was a stunning space both to look at and to look out from.

It turns out Cornell was not the only reason for Mr. Schmidt to be on the island this lovely day. He is also a bit of a history buff, and he has a particular fondness for Franklin Roosevelt. "If you study FDR, he embodies the principles of America in a way that is for time immemorial," Mr. Schmidt explained. "I've been using his Four Freedoms in my speeches for a while, because if you study it, it's hard to understand in the context of what it represented in America at the time, but the ideas are remarkable and enduring. We face similar challenges today, to religious tolerance, freedom, etc. In many way, it's more applicable today then before."

So this may be a great space for the city, and for the entire nation, but it will also be a huge amenity for the new tech campus, as well. "If you think about it from the Cornell New York Tech perspective, this is sort of our neighbor," Mr. Schmidt said. "For the quality life of the students, just think of what this represents."

With so much going on on the island, the park, the school, maybe a water taxi dock, some new housing to the north at some point, what does the future hold? "It'll be more gentrified, it will be more upscale," Mr. Schmidt admitted.

Is that a good thing?

"It is the nature of New York," he responded. "Roosevelt Island will become a premier destination. Simply because of the sum of everything, the park, the new development, the residential, this will become one of those places everyone wants to be."

And you know that's the truth. After all, it comes straight from the mouth of Google.

DvF wearing the Google glasses. (YouTube)

Opinion has been split over the new Google Glass glasses, which are surely some type of CIA/Jason Bourne/Total Recall prototype that someone accidentally leaked the schematics for over Gmail. Right? These things cannot be designed for regular citizens, especially since they make no sense.

But they're not quite as ugly as people are making them out to be, and when Diane von Furstenburg decided to do a quick mini-doc about her Fashion Week show, putting these recording glasses on all her models was actually a genius idea. (Maybe?!) (We don't know!) (You tell us.) (Video after the jump.)

http://youtu.be/30Pjl31cyDY

Thomas Claburn at Information Week says:

Von Furstenberg's use of Google Glass is fine as a personal narrative, but her story could have been captured just as well with a mobile phone, a GoPro helmet-mounted video camera, or some other video device in a small form factor. Granted a fashion show may demand something more subtle than a strap-on camera, but few future Glass customers will be runway models.

We might disagree. If developers wanted people to use this product, we need to be convinced that the Google Glass wouldn't interfere with our everyday life ... meaning that we would need something more subtle than a strap-on camera. This is one case where fashion might equal functionality.

In its progressive/penny-pinching efforts to be a tech-forward transit agency, the MTA has outsourced much of its app development to outside firms and open-source programmers. Among the innovations out there, this meant the MTA's official trip planner was integrated with Google Maps, as has been the case since 2008. The future is now!

This is good, because the MTA is often broken down and under repair in reality, so digitally would mean even more problems. But that is also where the interfaces did not connect: There was no integration between the Google Map routes and the MTA Service Alerts that warned straphangers about construction- and emergency-related service changes. That changes today.

Google has announced that it will now feature service alerts on its web and mobile map apps, and will offer alternate routes for riders.

Part of the frustration with this disconnect was the fact that the whole reason for turning to the trip finder, since every New Yorker knows the Subway by heart and would never need to look anything up, is that you know the E is not running and you need to get from Greenpoint to MoMA and maybe the 7 is being funny, too, so what the hell should you do? Had you turned to the MTA's official map in the past, the answer would have been, take the G to the E. Sad face.

But no longer, as Google explains on the Lat Log:

Have you ever arrived at a subway platform only to find that the train you intended to take is skipping stops, rerouted on another line, or isn't running at all due to scheduled maintenance? Now when you click on any of the 468 New York City subway stations labeled on Google Maps, you’ll see whether any planned service changes are expected to affect that station at the time. In addition, the relevant alerts will be included in the step-by-step transit directions pointing you wherever you’re going.

Google also notes that this only works on the web and Android phones. Why not iPhones? Because Apple, like Republicans, hates mass transit.

Amid a media merger whirlwind at the end of his tenure (AOL + HuffPo! Daily Beast + Newsweek!), Mr. Gingras was looking for a buyer for the early adopter online magazine (est. 1995), but took it off the market after talks with Michael Wolff-founded news aggregator Newser disintegrated. With Ms. Jeffers at the helm, Mr. Talbot will stay on in an advisory role.

"Our goal is not only to continue publishing some of the best news and entertainment journalism on the Web, but to reemerge as a technological leader of online media by experimenting with emerging platforms, new data sets and new ways of interacting with stories," communications director Liam O'Donoghue wrote.

The company has also grabbed Wenner Media's Matthew Sussberg to serve as vice president of Salon's advertising.