Web Development Live

With more than $100 million in assets, Texell wanted to drive the growth of its online channel, strengthen its Internet presence and reinforce its brand, while providing a secure forum to protect confidential data and comply with Federal regulations. According to Tony Hale, chief executive officer of Texell, what began as a simple evaluation of Web hosting providers evolved into a much more comprehensive endeavor, ultimately enabling the credit union to reap significant benefits from an extensive program that tied together multiple initiatives.

In addition to Web design and maintenance, Texell’s program incorporates Goldleaf’s marketing services, which ties the global campaign together to ensure cohesive and consistent messaging. Goldleaf’s marketing services include detailed market segmentation so the credit union can tailor specific marketing objectives to a particular audience.

“Goldleaf’s value proposition was unique, as it presented a solution that truly went beyond our initial needs,” Hale said. “Deploying Goldleaf’s technology demonstrates our commitment to our members through the creation of an easy-to-navigate, intuitive Web site, fully equipped with security features to protect our members’ confidential information. The site is customized, compliant, secure, and we were immediately impressed by the scope and depth of Goldleaf’s offering. The marketing services piece was especially attractive, as it pulls together the look and feel of the new site and couples it with marketing initiatives designed to drive more business to our institution.”

Texell is also leveraging Goldleaf’s distinct security features, including secure sockets layer (SSL) encryption, SAS-70 audit reporting and the Company’s Pharming Shield solution. Credit union executives also cited the flexibility of Goldleaf’s solution as a factor in their selection process. Texell has the capability to edit and manage content internally, which maximizes the speed and accuracy at which online information can be updated and maintained.

The site has multi-tiered authority to preserve the integrity of the data, as well as the ability for Texell to pre-create site changes that can be implemented on a timed rollout. Additionally, the solution has an automated system that archives changes to Web site content and images that will be tracked throughout the life cycle of Texell’s relationship, ensuring compliance with Regulation DD in the Truth and Savings Act.

Todd Shiver, executive vice president of Goldleaf Financial Solutions, said, “Our mission is to help our clients succeed and leverage technology to improve efficiencies, increase profitability, be more competitive, and provide the best products and services in their market. Our entire company is dedicated to the development of innovative solutions that have a positive and direct impact on an institution’s asset and customer base. Texell understands its members’ needs and has a very strategic approach to Web and marketing services, which we believe enables them to stand apart from the competition.”

The Newspaper Association of America (NAA) has released a report about the increase of online video (11.5 billion videos viewed in March, according Comscore). Its title is “Zooming In on Online Video: A Development & Growth Guide for Newspaper Web Sites.” Here is the download link.

Main conclusion: everyone needs to jump on online video. “While still a small percentage of total and local online advertising, online video represents an enormous opportunity for newspapers to grow revenue and audience,” says the report.

“As competition heats up for online video mindshare, newspapers have an excellent opportunity to leverage their skills and content and capture an even larger share of online advertising spending.”

Local online video advertising was a $400 million business in 2007, according to Borrell Associates.

The survey shows that online video is not solely the domain of the Web department. Although online editors and producers are involved in shooting, editing and publishing video for the newspaper’s Web site, reporters and photographers are also heavily involved.

NY Web Standards May 2008 will focus on Microformats with attendees from the web design and development fields, expected to attend an evening of comprehensive discussions and networking.

Microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and adopted standards. They are intended to solve simple problems and were developed by examining current behaviors and usage patterns demonstrated by web content creators.

NY Web Standards group will introduce microformats and discuss their usage. “During this event, the audience will learn what microformats are, why they were created, and how to use this simple technology to make data on webpages more easily indexed, searched, and cross-referenced,” said Jeffrey Barke, senior developer at theMechanism – New York.

In addition to attendee introductions, web-standards discussions and optional ‘show and tell’ sessions, the event will also highlight keynote speaker, Jeffrey Barke, senior developer at theMechanism.

As a monthly event, the NY Web Standards Meetup is focused on bringing valuable information, trends, insights and best practice development techniques to the web development community.

“theMechanism strives to be a leader in the practice of web standards and accessibility,” said Dave Fletcher, Founding Partner & Creative Director of theMechanism. “Facilitating the New York Web Standards Meetup Group at our Manhattan office is one way for us to lead by example while encouraging an personal and professional sodality among like-minded designers and agencies in the greater New York area.”

PUBLIC radio is drawing its largest audience ever, some 28 million listeners nationwide each week. But if it’s a golden era, you wouldn’t know it from the frenetic activity to remake the genre.

In WNYC’s antiquated downtown Manhattan studios, the veteran National Public Radio and NBC journalist John Hockenberry and his co-host, Adaora Udoji, formerly of CNN, are rehearsing to find a comfortable rapport for their new live morning news program, which begins Monday. Flush from a $2 million Knight Foundation grant, this program, “The Takeaway” is designed with it partner, Public Radio International, and collaborators including The New York Times, the BBC World Service and the Boston public station WGBH, to be a stark counterpoint to the taped interviews on NPR’s venerable “Morning Edition.”

In the Chicago area, an 11-month-old FM station, :Vocalo, never mentions that it is affiliated with Chicago Public Radio. There’s no “All Things Considered” or “Car Talk”; instead hosts weave together interviews, commentary, reports and music, culled from user submissions to a companion Web site, vocalo.org.

NPR itself started the Web-radio hybrid “Bryant Park Project” last fall, hoping younger listeners would like to hear lively hosts banter about news and culture. And NPR’s year-old midday talk show “Tell Me More,” anchored by the former “Nightline” correspondent Michel Martin, aims at diverse new voices.

The urgency to find new formats is driven by audience research that can be read as glass half-empty or half-full. The 28 million weekly public radio listeners recorded by Arbitron in spring 2007 topped the previous high of 27.5 million in 2004. But the research also showed that the listeners were tuning in for shorter periods.

Public radio “had an enormous surge in listening over about a 10-year period from the mid ’90s up through about 2003, principally driven by a huge response to public radio’s news and information programming,” said Tom Thomas, co-chief executive officer of the Station Resource Group, a public radio consortium. But since 2003 “the audience has essentially been flat,” he said.

To address this, the consortium recently received a Corporation for Public Broadcasting grant to identify ways to get the audience growing again, and “Everything is on the table,” Mr. Thomas said.

Last year some 1,400 people entered the Public Radio Talent Quest, an online search for new hosts run by the Public Radio Exchange, a Web site, prx.org, where independent radio producers market their content. None of the three winners — a science blogger, a slam poet and a nonprofit executive who is a storyteller — reflect that typical public radio sound, said Jake Shapiro, the exchange’s executive director.

Executives stress that the new programming won’t abandon in-depth news, just “get away from a tone that feels too clubby,” said Graham Griffith, executive producer of “The Takeaway.” Nor do they want to tinker with existing programs; they just want more options for more people.

“A lot of the research that guided public radio’s direction in the last 30 years focused on us discovering a niche we could serve and serve well,” of highly educated, news-craving listeners, said Maxie Jackson, WNYC’s senior director for program development. But, he added, that formula “didn’t appeal to people of color.” He called it an issue of tonality.

“The Takeaway,” Mr. Jackson said, could be a model. It will be interactive, he said, and multicultural, with “voices, perspectives, contributors and stories that are relevant to a wide swath of people.” Its tone, he said, “has to be more compelling, with more verve.”

“People want to feel that the hosts are committed to the topic,” he added.

At a recent run-through, an Iowa State University economist discussed global food riots, and an assistant professor at Morehouse College dissected the Atlanta Ballet’s collaboration with the hip-hop star Big Boi. Listeners were encouraged to comment online about how fuel costs would affect vacation plans.

The morning hours where radio thrives have become a battleground, even though NPR’s “Morning Edition,” with 12.9 million listeners a week, is the second-most-listened to national radio program, behind Rush Limbaugh’s.

NPR itself created “Bryant Park Project” because the organization is “mission-driven, and if we can reach more people, great,” said Ellen Weiss, NPR’s vice president for news.

The program had a tough start. One host, Luke Burbank, quit just before the first day, Oct. 1, although he didn’t leave until mid-December. The Remaining host, Alison Stewart, is on maternity leave. Online listening is growing, and with few broadcast stations carrying the program, a plan to go Internet-only has been discussed. Ms. Weiss said that would not happen but declined to discuss coming changes.

Meanwhile in February, with competition looming, NPR cut the fees to carry “Morning Edition” that stations had long complained about by a total of $5 million (to take effect next fiscal year).

Still, stations in Boston, Cape Cod, Baltimore, Miami and across Wisconsin have committed to give “The Takeaway” a try, although “Morning Edition” will still be widely available in those places. On WNYC “Morning Edition” will shrink to five hours between the AM and FM stations, to make way for two hours of “The Takeaway.”

By June 30 the new program will be broadcasting four hours daily, although not all stations will carry the whole thing. Mr. Griffith envisions “The Takeaway” as a “breakfast table,” where a nationwide conversation can take place. Mr. Hockenberry uses a more high-tech metaphor, calling it in an interview “a massive multiplayer game, the rules and title of which are, basically, curiosity.”

JG. Ballard famously characterised himself as a weatherman:
“I read the sky and see the coming storms.” But, like Walter
Benjamin’s tragic “angel of history”, he has been forced to look
backwards at the cataclysmic storm behind him. For Ballard, that
storm is the Pacific War, the source of the questions with which he
has grappled so creatively all his life. It is no surprise that it
should occupy such a central place in this autobiography.
Readers of Ballard’s loosely autobiographical novel, Empire
of the Sun, will recognise the panorama that emerges of the
full-bore, laissez-faire capitalist enclave that was Shanghai:
European and Chinese glitterati, revolutionaries and refugees,
gangsters and warlords, British, American and Japanese soldiers,
sailors and washed-up drifters and the mass of Chinese peasants
uprooted by years of civil war eking a living in the grinding
poverty of the streets.
It’s easy to see why young James Graham Ballard thought this
cruel yet enthralling phantasmagoria a “magical place”. His home
life was cold and emotionally sterile; children were “somewhere
between the servants and an obedient labrador”. The family’s social
circle was occupied with bridge, gin and gossip punctuated by the
occasional trip to a civil war battlefield to collect souvenirs and
observe the rotting Chinese corpses. Insulated, incurious and
assured of their natural superiority, they appeared blissfully
ignorant of the forces at work outside until the Japanese forced
them into Lunghua internment camp.
As much for its casual cruelties as its sheer destructiveness,
war was a revelation to James. It stripped things down to their
essence; even the most stable worlds were shown to be contingent,
transitory and little more than a “stage set that could be
dismantled, swept away into the debris of the past”. It also gave
him a repertoire of imagery that would fill his novels: empty
swimming pools, deserted cityscapes, abandoned prizes of bourgeois
life strewn across devastated landscapes.
Coming “home” to an England he knew only from A. A. Milne and
Just William, Ballard found a grey, defeated country ruled
by mysterious social codes, where even “hope itself was
rationed”.
Freudian psychoanalysis and surrealism’s rejection of
rationality - “where the deep revolutions of the psyche matter more
than the cosy dramas of everyday life” - exerted the most powerful
intellectual influence. He loved American film noir with its “hard
and unsentimental image of the primeval city”.
But it was in science fiction that he found an arena. Ballard
had little in common with orthodox American sci-fi with its heroic
imperial displacements into outer space. He was concerned with
inner space and the psychopathological impulses he glimpsed beneath
the gleaming surfaces of modern technology. What did the nascent
culture of advertising, consumerism and entertainment presage? And
what was its relationship to the “dead Chinese . . . in their
ditches” and the weapons that would make World War II seem like a
preamble?
Ballard’s most controversial novel, Crash, is a kind of
ideas laboratory where an intuition about the unconscious links
between cars, sex and death could be tested. This “psychopathic
hymn” was confronting in 1973 but in 1996 - the year before
Princess Diana’s death - reaction to David Cronenberg’s film was
even more strident. Perhaps the outcry tells us as much about a
failure of cultural imagination as it does about the
psychopathology of everyday life.
An audience accustomed to the conventions of good, old-fashioned
English realism and the redemptive tales supplied by an
all-pervasive entertainment industry was ill equipped for Ballard’s
surrealist parable. Though it was well received in France.
If Ballard’s books, particularly the early ones, can be thought
of as thought-experiments, it’s also true that his protagonists are
often more case history than character. The Drowned World
might seem prescient now, but Ballard was not concerned with global
warming any more than he was worried about the organic world
becoming crystalline in The Crystal World: he wants to
observe people reacting to catastrophe. This is the nature of his
craft and is what is so intriguing about his novels.
But this lack of regard for that centrepiece of contemporary
fiction - the self - is also what makes Ballard’s autobiography, at
times, unsatisfying. He can’t shift register from dispassionate
observer to emotionally involved participant.
We learn in a perfunctory manner about the death of his first
wife, Mary, and that he brought up three children as a sole parent.
People can do extraordinary things while their kids are asleep, but
few men, particularly in the 1960s, would have responded so
admirably to the discipline of “the pram in the hall”. This
explorer of psychotic currents beneath modern life, this sometime
inspiration for an acid-fuelled, counterculture, was a
whisky-and-soda family man dedicated to raising his kids in
suburban Shepperton.
In the final chapter, almost in an afterthought, Ballard tells
us that he is dying of cancer and that this will, in all
likelihood, be his final book. Valedictory maybe, but certainly not
self-indulgent. Miracles of Life is very much the
biography of the thinking writer, rather than the feeling man.
Ballard has spent his life thinking about the relationship
between the human psyche, violence, and the nature of technology,
and in so doing created an original, disturbing and influential
body of work. And I, for one, can’t look at a freeway, a mall or an
airport without some part of me registering a disquiet that I can
only describe as Ballardian.

DEEP in the bowels of a Las Vegas hotel, a smiley face and the
words “Hello World” display on a web page. Applause breaks out. The
page is called the Acid2 Browser Test, and the web browser is a
preview of Internet Explorer 8, presented by its platform
architect, Chris Wilson.
“Thank you from the bottom of my heart,” says a member of the
audience to more applause from about 3000 web designers and
developers at the Mix08 conference, where Microsoft showed its
latest internet technology.
The Acid2 page (webstandards.org/action/acid2/) was created by
the Web Standards Project to test whether a browser conforms to the
official standards for describing page layout, mainly focusing on
cascading style sheets (CSS).
The reason for the applause is twofold: first, until now
Microsoft’s web browser, used by an estimated 75 per cent of
net surfers (although Firefox has been eroding that hold), has
never been close to passing the test; second, Internet Explorer’s
poor standards compliance causes significant extra work for web
designers.
When users navigate to a web page, they expect it to look and
work the same whatever the browser or operating system they are
using. Achieving this is difficult. Different browsers display the
same page differently, with IE often the worst offender.
Web developers now hope they do not have to insert conditional
code to account for these differences, but can deliver a standard
page to all browsers. “CSS support in IE8 looks thus far to be
very, very promising,” says Eric Meyer, an independent expert in
the field. “It’s very important, because the level of CSS support
in IE7 and IE6 has served as a brake on advanced CSS adoption by
authors, limiting them to less-advanced techniques and
capabilities.”
Internet Explorer has a curious history. Six versions were
released between 1995 and 2001, the time of the “browser wars” with
Netscape. Microsoft won the war and then did not release another
major version of the browser for five years - long enough for it to
become thoroughly outdated.
IE’s CSS implementation fell far behind that of other popular
browsers. In late 2006 Microsoft released IE7, which fixed some
problems but still lagged behind its rivals. “Differences between
browsers simply waste too much developer time,” says Dean
Hachamovitch, Microsoft’s general manager for IE, without
mentioning the extent to which Microsoft created the problem.
Mr Hachamovitch, who has led the Explorer team since 2003,
explains why Microsoft took so long to address these deficiencies.
“It comes down to what we were doing with our time,” he says.
“Between 2001 and 2003 we were building what you experience now as
Windows Presentation Foundation and Silverlight.”
These technologies display not HTML, the language of web pages,
but XAML, Microsoft’s proprietary code for creating rich visual
content.
“In 2003 and 2004 we were making IE secure,” he says, referring
to the security-focused Windows XP Service Pack 2.
Security remained the theme in IE7. The dilemma was that fixing
bugs introduced compatibility problems. “You can’t just flick a
switch and have all the browsers in the world change, or have all
the servers and services in the world change,” Mr Hachamovitch
says. The result was that some websites looked worse than before,
because they detected that IE was accessing them and delivering
content that took into account presumed peculiarities.
Microsoft’s answer was to build “compatibility modes” into IE8.
The manner in which this was done remains controversial. The
question was whether to default to the IE7 compatible mode, or
default to the better standards mode, Mr Hachamovitch says. “(We
found in) releasing IE7 that web developers were slow to modify
their sites. We wanted to keep the web working.”
Microsoft initially announced that IE8 would behave by default
like IE7. Page designers would have to include special code to turn
on IE8’s standards support. The decision was greeted with a hail of
protest because it might perpetuate a non-standard web.
Earlier this month, Mr Hachamovitch announced that Microsoft had
changed its mind. “We’ve decided that IE8 will, by default,
interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it
can.”
Apparently the key to that change of heart was a separate
strategic announcement last month, covering what Microsoft calls
interoperability principles and promising “open connections to its
products, support for industry standards and data portability”.
According to Mr Hachamovitch, Microsoft now had “a more
interoperable way; a more compatible way”.
It sounded good, but what about browser scripting. The context
is important. Mr Hachamovitch had already stated that Microsoft
spent three years neglecting IE for the sake of a more proprietary
technology, which is now appearing on the web as a browser plug-in
called Silverlight.
This is similar in some ways to Adobe’s Flash, and supports rich
multimedia effects within web pages as well as the ability to run
applications written in Microsoft’s .NET Framework.
Silverlight and Flash applications in effect bypass the browser.
Web standards advocates are wary of them because they replace the
open web with content that depends on a proprietary plug-in.
The Mozilla Foundation, creator of the cross-platform Firefox
browser, prefers to upgrade the capabilities of the browser itself.
A key component of this is JavaScript, the programming language
that runs in the browser and that is standardised by ECMA, the
European standards body, under the name ECMAScript. Mozilla is keen
to see the current JavaScript upgraded to a far more powerful
version called ECMAScript 4.0.
“Why do we care about ECMAScript 4.0?” asks Mozilla’s
vice-president of engineering, Mike Schroepfer. The answer is that
JavaScript is the language of the net. We want to keep pushing that
technology forward to make it easier for people to build bigger,
faster, more secure websites.”
Asked if Microsoft will implement ECMAScript 4.0, Mr
Hachamovitch prevaricates and talks about competing demands on the
IE development team.
“Right now there isn’t really an ECMAScript 4 offering to
implement, there is an ECMAscript for discussion.” he says.
The Guardian

JG. Ballard famously characterised himself as a weatherman:
“I read the sky and see the coming storms.” But, like Walter
Benjamin’s tragic “angel of history”, he has been forced to look
backwards at the cataclysmic storm behind him. For Ballard, that
storm is the Pacific War, the source of the questions with which he
has grappled so creatively all his life. It is no surprise that it
should occupy such a central place in this autobiography.
Readers of Ballard’s loosely autobiographical novel, Empire
of the Sun, will recognise the panorama that emerges of the
full-bore, laissez-faire capitalist enclave that was Shanghai:
European and Chinese glitterati, revolutionaries and refugees,
gangsters and warlords, British, American and Japanese soldiers,
sailors and washed-up drifters and the mass of Chinese peasants
uprooted by years of civil war eking a living in the grinding
poverty of the streets.
It’s easy to see why young James Graham Ballard thought this
cruel yet enthralling phantasmagoria a “magical place”. His home
life was cold and emotionally sterile; children were “somewhere
between the servants and an obedient labrador”. The family’s social
circle was occupied with bridge, gin and gossip punctuated by the
occasional trip to a civil war battlefield to collect souvenirs and
observe the rotting Chinese corpses. Insulated, incurious and
assured of their natural superiority, they appeared blissfully
ignorant of the forces at work outside until the Japanese forced
them into Lunghua internment camp.
As much for its casual cruelties as its sheer destructiveness,
war was a revelation to James. It stripped things down to their
essence; even the most stable worlds were shown to be contingent,
transitory and little more than a “stage set that could be
dismantled, swept away into the debris of the past”. It also gave
him a repertoire of imagery that would fill his novels: empty
swimming pools, deserted cityscapes, abandoned prizes of bourgeois
life strewn across devastated landscapes.
Coming “home” to an England he knew only from A. A. Milne and
Just William, Ballard found a grey, defeated country ruled
by mysterious social codes, where even “hope itself was
rationed”.
Freudian psychoanalysis and surrealism’s rejection of
rationality - “where the deep revolutions of the psyche matter more
than the cosy dramas of everyday life” - exerted the most powerful
intellectual influence. He loved American film noir with its “hard
and unsentimental image of the primeval city”.
But it was in science fiction that he found an arena. Ballard
had little in common with orthodox American sci-fi with its heroic
imperial displacements into outer space. He was concerned with
inner space and the psychopathological impulses he glimpsed beneath
the gleaming surfaces of modern technology. What did the nascent
culture of advertising, consumerism and entertainment presage? And
what was its relationship to the “dead Chinese . . . in their
ditches” and the weapons that would make World War II seem like a
preamble?
Ballard’s most controversial novel, Crash, is a kind of
ideas laboratory where an intuition about the unconscious links
between cars, sex and death could be tested. This “psychopathic
hymn” was confronting in 1973 but in 1996 - the year before
Princess Diana’s death - reaction to David Cronenberg’s film was
even more strident. Perhaps the outcry tells us as much about a
failure of cultural imagination as it does about the
psychopathology of everyday life.
An audience accustomed to the conventions of good, old-fashioned
English realism and the redemptive tales supplied by an
all-pervasive entertainment industry was ill equipped for Ballard’s
surrealist parable. Though it was well received in France.
If Ballard’s books, particularly the early ones, can be thought
of as thought-experiments, it’s also true that his protagonists are
often more case history than character. The Drowned World
might seem prescient now, but Ballard was not concerned with global
warming any more than he was worried about the organic world
becoming crystalline in The Crystal World: he wants to
observe people reacting to catastrophe. This is the nature of his
craft and is what is so intriguing about his novels.
But this lack of regard for that centrepiece of contemporary
fiction - the self - is also what makes Ballard’s autobiography, at
times, unsatisfying. He can’t shift register from dispassionate
observer to emotionally involved participant.
We learn in a perfunctory manner about the death of his first
wife, Mary, and that he brought up three children as a sole parent.
People can do extraordinary things while their kids are asleep, but
few men, particularly in the 1960s, would have responded so
admirably to the discipline of “the pram in the hall”. This
explorer of psychotic currents beneath modern life, this sometime
inspiration for an acid-fuelled, counterculture, was a
whisky-and-soda family man dedicated to raising his kids in
suburban Shepperton.
In the final chapter, almost in an afterthought, Ballard tells
us that he is dying of cancer and that this will, in all
likelihood, be his final book. Valedictory maybe, but certainly not
self-indulgent. Miracles of Life is very much the
biography of the thinking writer, rather than the feeling man.
Ballard has spent his life thinking about the relationship
between the human psyche, violence, and the nature of technology,
and in so doing created an original, disturbing and influential
body of work. And I, for one, can’t look at a freeway, a mall or an
airport without some part of me registering a disquiet that I can
only describe as Ballardian.

Like a polished display case in a fusty museum - carefully lit,
gleaming like crystal, secure as Fort Knox - the glass salumi
cabinet, on a long and handsome pink marble table beside a
fire-engine red, pedestal-mounted Berkel slicer, is the
centrepiece.
It tells more of the story than any other single element within
the craftily designed, outrageously sexy Giuseppe, Arnaldo %26amp;
Sons: Maurice Terzini and Robert Marchetti’s homecoming
performance.
Beyond the dangling prosciutto and guanciale, it is the story of
a restaurant through value-adding to pigs. Primacy of produce;
clever branding; Italian heritage; modern Australian style and
simplicity. Walk around the salumi table a few more times, inhale
deeply, and you’ll soon understand a bit more about one of the more
exciting restaurants to open in Melbourne for years.
Not that there’s anything radical about the food orchestrated by
chef/partner Robert Marchetti and his team, a slightly more
ambitious version of the rustic tune they’ve been playing at North
Bondi Italian for several years. It’s good, honest and refreshingly
unpredictable/approachable food that stays true to the Italian
principle of respecting quality produce from the start. It’s a menu
as much about “food” as it is “cooking”.
And Marchetti cares about food more than most.
No, what’s exciting about GAS is not so much what you eat but
how you eat, the way the act of refreshment and nourishment can be
spun so many ways. The way it invites customers to get involved.
And for that, we can probably thank Marchetti’s partner Terzini, a
man who apparently never stops questioning the rules of dining,
never stops looking for inspiration, in this case with a nod to New
York chef/restaurateur Mario Batali.
Despite the money, despite the hype, GAS is just a place to eat
good, simple food inspired by Rome. It’s nothing more or less than
a great modern trattoria.
But the style element of everything - from the architecture down
to the printing of the receipt - has been orchestrated by one of
the true innovators of Australia’s restaurant industry, the man who
invented Caffe e Cucina all those years ago, and kept going with Il
Bacaro, Melbourne Wine Room, Otto, Icebergs Dining Room and North
Bondi Italian: Terzini, the Melbourne boy made good. Cast your eye
around - beyond the menu (which may have you pining for the back
streets of Trastevere) - and other elements provide essential clues
to the essence: the spotlit bread station, where each table’s
selection of grissini, focaccia, sourdough and casalinga is racked,
cut and doled out; or that marble wine “fountain”, behind a
ceiling-high stainless-steel silo-like racking system of bottles,
where four fresh, uncomplicated, food-friendly wines are literally
on tap above a pink marble trough for those who choose the “vini in
caraffa” option, the house wine you can feel good about.
And there is the floor staff, replete in butcher’s white cotton
jackets, jeans and Converse trainers. Where does he find them?
Comparing Giuseppe, Arnaldo %26amp; Sons to Rockpool Bar %26amp; Grill
is both inevitable and pointless: they sail different culinary
waters, delivering different dining experiences. Yet one cannot
help but compare the casual sophistication of Maurice Terzini’s
opening-month waitstaff with that of Perry. GAS cruises where
Rockpool has always struggled with the wind shifts.
And inevitably, as you sit in one of many variously tiled “pods”
that form the eating zones here, jumping out at you via clever -
almost theatrical - lighting from a stark, black backdrop that
extends through the restaurant’s ceilings and floors, there is the
food, from a menu with more departments than Telstra.
Slices of pink, fresh prosciutto ($12) from Lismore on waxed
paper branded “Salumi by Robert Marchetti”. Or fragrant, sweet
mortadella ($10) served warm with a never-ending supply of those
excellent breads and house-branded olive oil. A dish of fabulous
spaghettini with tomato, oodles of garlic and a swathe of briny sea
urchin roe ($24); orecchiette with an anchovy-laced broccoli sauce;
perfectly “bitey” pappardelle with a deeply flavoured, meaty ragu
of “wild boar” ($23, although we doubt there was ever anything wild
about the animal). A wild chicory (puntarelle) salad ($17) with
Sicilian anchovy, dandelion, a shallot dressing and a shaving of
Asiago (cheese), served with a selection of vinegars. Raw scallops
($15) dressed with oil, lemon, young rocket and slices of pickled
dwarf peach, looking suspiciously like olives. A lovely steak (La
Tagliata, $29) dressed with a tangle of spring onion, green
peppercorns, lemon, oil and fresh chilli. A pea, shallot and fresh
herb salad ($9) sprinkled with dried ricotta salata.
Or a $14 chocolate pot that is like eating a stiff, cool,
Italian hot chocky; an Italian trifle (zuppa Inglese, $22 for two)
that sings with fruit, almond, pistachio and grappa-infused
sponge.
Trust me; apart from the salumi, which - ironically - is not
only excellent but too expensive, eating here is great value for
money, because the food’s simplicity falls back on great produce
handled sympathetically, with true Italian feeling.
Inevitably, really, the most interesting question about this new
restaurant was never going to be “is it any good?” Of course it’s
good. It has the management, the staff (both in the amazing kitchen
and on the floor), the ideas, the resources, the look.
The question was always: “will it work?” Look at everything
Terzini has done in the past, and more recently with his sidekick
Marchetti on board and you cannot help but wonder how a business at
Crown provides continuity. And the answer is, it doesn’t. This is a
break, a development and, probably, a toe in the water of
potentially more lucrative waters abroad under the PBL
umbrella.
How does that affect - or disaffect - quite literally a
generation of Melbourne food and wine appreciators who grew up on
the style and substance of Terzini-conceived establishments? Will
we go to it despite it being at Crown? Or does the target audience
even include us? On the basis of a couple of early visits when
Marchetti and Terzini were around, the answer is, for me, “yes”. I
may not go as often as if the restaurant were in a
less-institutionalised location, a location without so much
baggage.
But I’ll go.
Perhaps mindful of this very Melbourne scepticism, this
expectation of what a Terzini restaurant is and is not, the boys
have over-delivered. So to the final question. Can they keep it
up?
And for that, we’ll just have to wait.
Score: 1-9: Unacceptable.
10-11: Just OK, some shortcomings.
12: Fair. 13: Getting there.
14: Recommended. 15: Good.
16: Really good. 17: Truly
excellent. 18: Outstanding.
19-20: Approaching perfection, Victoria’s
best.

Like a polished display case in a fusty museum - carefully lit,
gleaming like crystal, secure as Fort Knox - the glass salumi
cabinet, on a long and handsome pink marble table beside a
fire-engine red, pedestal-mounted Berkel slicer, is the
centrepiece.
It tells more of the story than any other single element within
the craftily designed, outrageously sexy Giuseppe, Arnaldo %26amp;
Sons: Maurice Terzini and Robert Marchetti’s homecoming
performance.
Beyond the dangling prosciutto and guanciale, it is the story of
a restaurant through value-adding to pigs. Primacy of produce;
clever branding; Italian heritage; modern Australian style and
simplicity. Walk around the salumi table a few more times, inhale
deeply, and you’ll soon understand a bit more about one of the more
exciting restaurants to open in Melbourne for years.
Not that there’s anything radical about the food orchestrated by
chef/partner Robert Marchetti and his team, a slightly more
ambitious version of the rustic tune they’ve been playing at North
Bondi Italian for several years. It’s good, honest and refreshingly
unpredictable/approachable food that stays true to the Italian
principle of respecting quality produce from the start. It’s a menu
as much about “food” as it is “cooking”.
And Marchetti cares about food more than most.
No, what’s exciting about GAS is not so much what you eat but
how you eat, the way the act of refreshment and nourishment can be
spun so many ways. The way it invites customers to get involved.
And for that, we can probably thank Marchetti’s partner Terzini, a
man who apparently never stops questioning the rules of dining,
never stops looking for inspiration, in this case with a nod to New
York chef/restaurateur Mario Batali.
Despite the money, despite the hype, GAS is just a place to eat
good, simple food inspired by Rome. It’s nothing more or less than
a great modern trattoria.
But the style element of everything - from the architecture down
to the printing of the receipt - has been orchestrated by one of
the true innovators of Australia’s restaurant industry, the man who
invented Caffe e Cucina all those years ago, and kept going with Il
Bacaro, Melbourne Wine Room, Otto, Icebergs Dining Room and North
Bondi Italian: Terzini, the Melbourne boy made good. Cast your eye
around - beyond the menu (which may have you pining for the back
streets of Trastevere) - and other elements provide essential clues
to the essence: the spotlit bread station, where each table’s
selection of grissini, focaccia, sourdough and casalinga is racked,
cut and doled out; or that marble wine “fountain”, behind a
ceiling-high stainless-steel silo-like racking system of bottles,
where four fresh, uncomplicated, food-friendly wines are literally
on tap above a pink marble trough for those who choose the “vini in
caraffa” option, the house wine you can feel good about.
And there is the floor staff, replete in butcher’s white cotton
jackets, jeans and Converse trainers. Where does he find them?
Comparing Giuseppe, Arnaldo %26amp; Sons to Rockpool Bar %26amp; Grill
is both inevitable and pointless: they sail different culinary
waters, delivering different dining experiences. Yet one cannot
help but compare the casual sophistication of Maurice Terzini’s
opening-month waitstaff with that of Perry. GAS cruises where
Rockpool has always struggled with the wind shifts.
And inevitably, as you sit in one of many variously tiled “pods”
that form the eating zones here, jumping out at you via clever -
almost theatrical - lighting from a stark, black backdrop that
extends through the restaurant’s ceilings and floors, there is the
food, from a menu with more departments than Telstra.
Slices of pink, fresh prosciutto ($12) from Lismore on waxed
paper branded “Salumi by Robert Marchetti”. Or fragrant, sweet
mortadella ($10) served warm with a never-ending supply of those
excellent breads and house-branded olive oil. A dish of fabulous
spaghettini with tomato, oodles of garlic and a swathe of briny sea
urchin roe ($24); orecchiette with an anchovy-laced broccoli sauce;
perfectly “bitey” pappardelle with a deeply flavoured, meaty ragu
of “wild boar” ($23, although we doubt there was ever anything wild
about the animal). A wild chicory (puntarelle) salad ($17) with
Sicilian anchovy, dandelion, a shallot dressing and a shaving of
Asiago (cheese), served with a selection of vinegars. Raw scallops
($15) dressed with oil, lemon, young rocket and slices of pickled
dwarf peach, looking suspiciously like olives. A lovely steak (La
Tagliata, $29) dressed with a tangle of spring onion, green
peppercorns, lemon, oil and fresh chilli. A pea, shallot and fresh
herb salad ($9) sprinkled with dried ricotta salata.
Or a $14 chocolate pot that is like eating a stiff, cool,
Italian hot chocky; an Italian trifle (zuppa Inglese, $22 for two)
that sings with fruit, almond, pistachio and grappa-infused
sponge.
Trust me; apart from the salumi, which - ironically - is not
only excellent but too expensive, eating here is great value for
money, because the food’s simplicity falls back on great produce
handled sympathetically, with true Italian feeling.
Inevitably, really, the most interesting question about this new
restaurant was never going to be “is it any good?” Of course it’s
good. It has the management, the staff (both in the amazing kitchen
and on the floor), the ideas, the resources, the look.
The question was always: “will it work?” Look at everything
Terzini has done in the past, and more recently with his sidekick
Marchetti on board and you cannot help but wonder how a business at
Crown provides continuity. And the answer is, it doesn’t. This is a
break, a development and, probably, a toe in the water of
potentially more lucrative waters abroad under the PBL
umbrella.
How does that affect - or disaffect - quite literally a
generation of Melbourne food and wine appreciators who grew up on
the style and substance of Terzini-conceived establishments? Will
we go to it despite it being at Crown? Or does the target audience
even include us? On the basis of a couple of early visits when
Marchetti and Terzini were around, the answer is, for me, “yes”. I
may not go as often as if the restaurant were in a
less-institutionalised location, a location without so much
baggage.
But I’ll go.
Perhaps mindful of this very Melbourne scepticism, this
expectation of what a Terzini restaurant is and is not, the boys
have over-delivered. So to the final question. Can they keep it
up?
And for that, we’ll just have to wait.
Score: 1-9: Unacceptable.
10-11: Just OK, some shortcomings.
12: Fair. 13: Getting there.
14: Recommended. 15: Good.
16: Really good. 17: Truly
excellent. 18: Outstanding.
19-20: Approaching perfection, Victoria’s
best.

Like a polished display case in a fusty museum - carefully lit,
gleaming like crystal, secure as Fort Knox - the glass salumi
cabinet, on a long and handsome pink marble table beside a
fire-engine red, pedestal-mounted Berkel slicer, is the
centrepiece.
It tells more of the story than any other single element within
the craftily designed, outrageously sexy Giuseppe, Arnaldo %26amp;
Sons: Maurice Terzini and Robert Marchetti’s homecoming
performance.
Beyond the dangling prosciutto and guanciale, it is the story of
a restaurant through value-adding to pigs. Primacy of produce;
clever branding; Italian heritage; modern Australian style and
simplicity. Walk around the salumi table a few more times, inhale
deeply, and you’ll soon understand a bit more about one of the more
exciting restaurants to open in Melbourne for years.
Not that there’s anything radical about the food orchestrated by
chef/partner Robert Marchetti and his team, a slightly more
ambitious version of the rustic tune they’ve been playing at North
Bondi Italian for several years. It’s good, honest and refreshingly
unpredictable/approachable food that stays true to the Italian
principle of respecting quality produce from the start. It’s a menu
as much about “food” as it is “cooking”.
And Marchetti cares about food more than most.
No, what’s exciting about GAS is not so much what you eat but
how you eat, the way the act of refreshment and nourishment can be
spun so many ways. The way it invites customers to get involved.
And for that, we can probably thank Marchetti’s partner Terzini, a
man who apparently never stops questioning the rules of dining,
never stops looking for inspiration, in this case with a nod to New
York chef/restaurateur Mario Batali.
Despite the money, despite the hype, GAS is just a place to eat
good, simple food inspired by Rome. It’s nothing more or less than
a great modern trattoria.
But the style element of everything - from the architecture down
to the printing of the receipt - has been orchestrated by one of
the true innovators of Australia’s restaurant industry, the man who
invented Caffe e Cucina all those years ago, and kept going with Il
Bacaro, Melbourne Wine Room, Otto, Icebergs Dining Room and North
Bondi Italian: Terzini, the Melbourne boy made good. Cast your eye
around - beyond the menu (which may have you pining for the back
streets of Trastevere) - and other elements provide essential clues
to the essence: the spotlit bread station, where each table’s
selection of grissini, focaccia, sourdough and casalinga is racked,
cut and doled out; or that marble wine “fountain”, behind a
ceiling-high stainless-steel silo-like racking system of bottles,
where four fresh, uncomplicated, food-friendly wines are literally
on tap above a pink marble trough for those who choose the “vini in
caraffa” option, the house wine you can feel good about.
And there is the floor staff, replete in butcher’s white cotton
jackets, jeans and Converse trainers. Where does he find them?
Comparing Giuseppe, Arnaldo %26amp; Sons to Rockpool Bar %26amp; Grill
is both inevitable and pointless: they sail different culinary
waters, delivering different dining experiences. Yet one cannot
help but compare the casual sophistication of Maurice Terzini’s
opening-month waitstaff with that of Perry. GAS cruises where
Rockpool has always struggled with the wind shifts.
And inevitably, as you sit in one of many variously tiled “pods”
that form the eating zones here, jumping out at you via clever -
almost theatrical - lighting from a stark, black backdrop that
extends through the restaurant’s ceilings and floors, there is the
food, from a menu with more departments than Telstra.
Slices of pink, fresh prosciutto ($12) from Lismore on waxed
paper branded “Salumi by Robert Marchetti”. Or fragrant, sweet
mortadella ($10) served warm with a never-ending supply of those
excellent breads and house-branded olive oil. A dish of fabulous
spaghettini with tomato, oodles of garlic and a swathe of briny sea
urchin roe ($24); orecchiette with an anchovy-laced broccoli sauce;
perfectly “bitey” pappardelle with a deeply flavoured, meaty ragu
of “wild boar” ($23, although we doubt there was ever anything wild
about the animal). A wild chicory (puntarelle) salad ($17) with
Sicilian anchovy, dandelion, a shallot dressing and a shaving of
Asiago (cheese), served with a selection of vinegars. Raw scallops
($15) dressed with oil, lemon, young rocket and slices of pickled
dwarf peach, looking suspiciously like olives. A lovely steak (La
Tagliata, $29) dressed with a tangle of spring onion, green
peppercorns, lemon, oil and fresh chilli. A pea, shallot and fresh
herb salad ($9) sprinkled with dried ricotta salata.
Or a $14 chocolate pot that is like eating a stiff, cool,
Italian hot chocky; an Italian trifle (zuppa Inglese, $22 for two)
that sings with fruit, almond, pistachio and grappa-infused
sponge.
Trust me; apart from the salumi, which - ironically - is not
only excellent but too expensive, eating here is great value for
money, because the food’s simplicity falls back on great produce
handled sympathetically, with true Italian feeling.
Inevitably, really, the most interesting question about this new
restaurant was never going to be “is it any good?” Of course it’s
good. It has the management, the staff (both in the amazing kitchen
and on the floor), the ideas, the resources, the look.
The question was always: “will it work?” Look at everything
Terzini has done in the past, and more recently with his sidekick
Marchetti on board and you cannot help but wonder how a business at
Crown provides continuity. And the answer is, it doesn’t. This is a
break, a development and, probably, a toe in the water of
potentially more lucrative waters abroad under the PBL
umbrella.
How does that affect - or disaffect - quite literally a
generation of Melbourne food and wine appreciators who grew up on
the style and substance of Terzini-conceived establishments? Will
we go to it despite it being at Crown? Or does the target audience
even include us? On the basis of a couple of early visits when
Marchetti and Terzini were around, the answer is, for me, “yes”. I
may not go as often as if the restaurant were in a
less-institutionalised location, a location without so much
baggage.
But I’ll go.
Perhaps mindful of this very Melbourne scepticism, this
expectation of what a Terzini restaurant is and is not, the boys
have over-delivered. So to the final question. Can they keep it
up?
And for that, we’ll just have to wait.
Score: 1-9: Unacceptable.
10-11: Just OK, some shortcomings.
12: Fair. 13: Getting there.
14: Recommended. 15: Good.
16: Really good. 17: Truly
excellent. 18: Outstanding.
19-20: Approaching perfection, Victoria’s
best.