Harry Winston's Opus Eleven watch: mechanical masterpiece / bank breaker (video)

It's been a while since we gave Harry Winston's Opus watch any play, but some timepieces are just too lavish to pass up. Case in point: the Opus Eleven, designed by temporal taste-maker Denis Giguet of MCT. Aesthetically speaking, it's probably a touch too steampunk for some, but the way it tells time is straight up fascinating. Giguet points out the movement enlists 566 parts, a good deal of which are exposed in the main face -- the center piece displays the hour, while the upper right disc shows off the minutes. Now, it might look like a relatively minimal watch for Harry Winston, but its case is made of 18k white gold and sapphire crystal, and the Opus Eleven's definitely got a Winston-worthy price tag, ringing in at about $250,000. So if you've got a quarter of a mill just laying around, this is a definite contender for that stack of cash. Want to see all those tiny pieces in action? Check out the video after the break.

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HOW TO: Land a Job at Amazon

Amazon‘s business model hit the ground running in the 1990s by revolutionizing retail and e-commerce. In recent years, the company has built on its success, transforming our reading habits and how we store data by selling e-readers and cloud computing services.

Now Amazon is bolstering its workforce to accommodate its growing line of products and services, which have doubled the company’s annual profit in the past three years. Its online jobs board lists 1,900 available positions at its Seattle headquarters alone. That’s twice as many openings the company had last year, reports The Seattle Times.

So how can you get in on the Amazon action that’s already 33,700 employees strong? Here are some tips and resources from the company’s recruiters for landing a job at Amazon.

Nearly half of the open positions at Amazon’s headquarters are tech jobs, but the company is also hiring recruiters, buyers and product managers at all levels of expertise.

Amazon has offices, fulfillment centers, customer service centers and software development centers throughout North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia. There are currently openings in all geographies, says Susan Harker, director of Global Talent Acquisition at Amazon.

The Amazon Careers website lists all open positions by category and location. You can also enter keywords if the drop-down menus don’t quite have what you’re looking for.

After you upload your resume to a specific job posting on the site, it’s up for review. Amazon’s recruiters actively review applicants whose resumes come in through the careers site, and they reach out to those who may be a good fit, says Harker. However, many of them are very active on LinkedIn, and Harker encourages applicants to reach out there.

For most positions, the interview process begins with a phone interview. So, how do you get through that?

“Well-prepared candidates know our business and technologies, and they’re able to talk in detail about anything that is included on the resume,” Harker says.

If it goes well on both sides, candidates are brought on-site for an in-person interview with a hiring manager and a few team members. Matt Goyer, a former software design engineer candidate, says in a blog post that his interview at Amazon HQ took six-and-a-half hours. Interviewers asked questions about his previous experience, technical skills and understanding of current industry trends. Goyer says he prepared by diligently studying books with sample interview questions and problems.

Still, interview experiences vary. The best you can do is “let your passion and enthusiasm show through,” Goyer says. “Don’t let your nerves get the best of you.”

Amazon’s motto is: “Start with the customer and work backwards.” Employees are expected to focus on the customer in all projects and innovations.

Showing signs of leadership and taking initiative is also important. “Every Amazonian is guided by our leadership principles, which include thinking long-term, innovating and thinking big on behalf of our customers,” says Harker. “We believe that every employee is a leader, whether you’re an individual contributor or a manager of a large team.”

If this sounds like you, it might be worth trying your luck at one of those thousands of current openings. If you do, remember to be prepared, confident and enthusiastic. Show you’re an innovative leader worth paying attention to.

Have you scored a job at Amazon or are you trying to? What has your experience been like? Tell us in the comments below.

Every week we put out a list of social media and web job opportunities. While we post a huge range of job listings, we’ve selected some of the top social media job opportunities from the past two weeks to get you started. Happy hunting!

- Top 5 Tips for Creating Impressive Video Resumes
- Are Cover Letters Still Relevant For Social Media and Tech Jobs?
- HOW TO: Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile’s New Skills Section
- Top 5 Online Communities for Starting Your Career
- HOW TO: Land a Business Development Job

Photo courtesy Flickr, Torley.

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‘Captain America: The First Avenger’ Trailer Hits YouTube

At Mashable, our abiding love for comic book-based films — both good and bad — is no secret. And we’re definitely looking forward to the forthcoming Captain America flick, which is set against a comics-meets-steampunk World War II backdrop.

As seen in the trailer, the film has some of the retro stylings of other comic-inspired offerings, such as X-Men: First Class, the latest installment of another popular Marvel-franchise-turned-film-series. But what’s really interesting for many fans of the Captain America series is this film’s special effects.

For one thing, star Chris Evans (who plays Captain America, a.k.a. Steve Rogers) is digitally manipulated to look quite underweight during the beginning of the film — underweight enough that he’s not allowed to enlist in the armed forces to fight Hitler and the Nazis.

But the so-called weakling signs up for a secret, experimental government program that eventually turns him into the USDA-approved muscular mass that is “super soldier” Captain America. After training under one Colonel Chester Phillips (played by Tommy Lee Jones), all the rest is Nazi-killing and romancing an Andrews Sister lookalike with very red lipstick — that would be Peggy Carter, played by Hayley Atwell.

Captain America: The First Avenger is directed by Joe Johnston. The script was written by no less than four heavy-hitters: directing a script by David Self, who adapted the screenplay for Road to Perdition; Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, who are together responsible for The Chronicles of Narnia films’ scripts; and Joss Whedon, of Buffy and Firefly fame.

The film will be in theaters July 22. For the time being, check out the 13-page digital comic book that accompanies the film, have a gander at the trailer, and let us know your opinions in the comments.

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Meet ‘Disco’, The Group Texting App Built Secretly Inside Google

It seems like Google has made a foray into the group messaging space today with Disco, a new iPhone app and website. Well, they sort of have.

The service utilizes the Disco.com domain that Google bought at Domainfest last year for $255K. The Disco.com site went up today and the beta app hit the App Store yesterday, but no one noticed it — until now. And here’s the thing: it was made by Slide.

We’ve been testing the app here at TC HQ and thus far its pretty fast, perhaps because it’s initial build is more bare-bones than fellow group messaging contenders like Fast Society, Beluga and GroupMe. It’s actually pretty similar to the initial build of GroupMe before it added push notifications.

Again, the app is made by Slide, the storied social apps property which Google acquired in August for $182 million. Slide has made iPhone apps before, but the last one was Super Poke, an app created pre-Google acquisition. But Slide is being run as an autonomous business unit within Google, so this app is unrelated to any Google “Plus One” social projects, we hear.

We’ve reached out to Google for comment on the app and will update when we hear back.

How the app will fare competing in the already saturated group messaging space remains to be seen, and you read MG’s take on it here.

In the meantime here’s two fun facts: that’s Slide founder Max Levchin’s Facebook photo in the app screenshot (he’s the one on the bike) and the sample group on the Disco homepage is named GaGa Fan Club, interesting light of Lady Gaga’s recent Google visit.

h/t TheDomains

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Qatar building fleet of remote control 'clouds' for World Cup 2022

By Joseph L. Flatley posted Mar 27th 2011 3:17AM When Qatar, an insanely wealthy Arab emirate roughly the size of Connecticut, won the bid to host the 2022 World Cup, one of the stipulations was that its newly constructed open-air soccer stadiums would be air conditioned. Of course, this is Qatar we're talkin' about here, so the solution would have to be as extravagant as its insanely wealthy Arab emirate status implies. That's why it was no huge shock when The Peninsula reported plans to cool at least some of the nine stadiums by using a fleet of solar powered "clouds," designed and constructed by a certain Dr. Saud Abdul Ghani and his team. Dr. Ghani, the head of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at Qatar University, said that the aircraft (more accurately described as really, really slow drones) will be operated by remote control, made of 100 percent light carbonic materials, and will initially cost half a million dollars each. But, really, what's a few million dollars when it's for a good cause?

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Atomos Ninja and Samurai HD video recorder / monitors bring compression jutsu to pro filmmaking

By Michael Gorman posted Mar 26th 2011 11:02AM We all drool over the hi-res video shot by cameras like the RED EPIC, but for indie-film types, processing the massive files produced takes a lot of time (and therefore money) and not everyone has an ARRI ALEXA to do native recording compression. Enter the Atomos Ninja and Samurai HD recorder / monitor / playback devices that take your 10-bit video and compress it in Apple's 1080p ProRes QuickTime format to make your post-production life a little easier. The Ninja pulls video through HDMI and deposits it on your choice of 2.5-inch HDD or SDD storage, does playback via a 4.3-inch 480 x 270 touchscreen, and has continuous power thanks to dual hot-swappable batteries (available in 2600, 5200, and 7800 mAh varieties). Meanwhile, the Samurai matches the Ninja's specs, but swaps out the HDMI connection for HD-SDI ports and adds SDI Loop-Through to connect an external monitor, a larger 5-inch 800 x 400 display, and 3D support (if you get two Samurais genlocked together). Both units have FireWire 800 and USB 2.0 and 3.0 connections for offloading your vids. Those with Spielbergian aspirations can pony up $995 for the Ninja right now, or pay $1,495 for the Samurai upon its release this summer.

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