Starting in its 2009 survey of users of architectural and engineering software, Cyon Research began asking respondents how they expected their companies’ revenue would change that year and the following year. In 2009 negativism was rampant as the United States plunged into a severe recession and 57% expected revenue to decrease and only 23% were looking for revenue to increase. The 2010 survey was more optimistic and in 2011, respondents had totally switched their outlook on the economy with 70% expecting revenue growth in the second half of 2012 and less than 10% expecting revenue to decrease during that period.This
A team of researchers recently shifted its operations to Edmonton, Alberta, from Hong Kong to continue development of a new alignment-control and surveying system for tunnel-boring operations. The city is helping with on-the job testing of the system, which is based on a successfully tested, smaller version for utility tunnels. Researchers aim to have a fully operational system for use in the construction of a large-diameter drainage tunnel this April.“The tunneling industry is losing productivity and having problems with quality control” because it lacks real-time survey data, says Ming Lu, associate professor at the University of Alberta. He says the
A British company has a reassuring answer for safeguarding data on USB flash-drive devices, which are all too easily lost or stolen.Conseal Security Ltd. on Jan. 17 released a new version of a locally installed software, called Conseal USB2, that password-protects such devices and then enrolls them in an online "dual lock" password-checking system. Whenever the device is jacked into a computer, the drive checks in with a server that turns back to the software's local management consol to verify the credentials.Because the device is managed from the local administrator's console, access rules can be set at a variety of
Image courtesy of Lantronix The xPrintServer by Lantronix helps iPads print. As elegant as they are, the Apple iPhones and iPads surging into the workplace still have a few rough edges, including the limited number of printers that work with them.But that's about to change.In February, Lantronix, an Irvine, Calif.-based technology firm, will start shipping the xPrintServer, a $149 plug-and-play device that can be added to any network Ethernet port, allowing wireless iOS devices to print out at almost any subnet printer. Early testers rave about it.The need stems from Apple's iOS engineering, which supports only AirPrint-compatible printers. While the
Bottom: PHoto courtesy of Lantronix, TOP: Photo courtesy of Air Burners Inc. Good FIT Air Burners Inc. puts QR codes on new equipment to get manuals, and sends out stickers for old rigs, too. At all hours, the staff at Air Burners Inc., Palm City, Fla., answers phone calls and e-mails about maintenance and repair questions from operators of the company's waste processing units around the world.The company's air-curtain burners cost up to $150,000 and are used in rugged environments such as landfills, construction sites and military operational zones—which leads to a problem. "They're usually far from where the manuals
Guest Commentary: Images of projects are a critical component of any architect or engineer’s portfolio. Photos of completed work, perhaps plans and sketches for work-in-progress, floorplans and elevations are all stock-in-trade. Often, websites contain media files. Perhaps a PDF download of a notable press mention, or a video or audio file of an interview on a project, or a talk on a panel or at a conference.All are great marketing assets. And online, all these photos, images, files, movies and sounds are all but invisible to search engines. Unless you make them otherwise.Search engines can't "read" anything but plain old
Photo Courtesy of HzO Many new products strive to protect mobile devices from water. HzO Inc. uses a chemical process to protect electronics inside and out. HzO's latest "waterblock" technology for protecting mobile devices may have been one of the hottest displays at the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It certainly was the wettest.The Salt Lake City company helps make sensitive electronic devices impervious to water and will be incorporating the feature in many big electronic manufacturers' product lines this summer, according to Paul Clayson, HzO president. He says the product coats critical components inside the devices to
A federal executive committee has reported to the Federal Communications Commission that a proposed national, hybrid satellite and terrestrial broadband network to leverage repurposed satellite spectrum cannot work without significant disruption to existing global positioning system devices.In a Jan. 13 letter, the National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing Executive Committee, which was asked to evaluate proposals for the network offered by LightSquared LTE, said, "Based upon this testing and analysis, there appear to be no practical solutions or mitigations that would permit the LightSquared broadband service, as proposed, to operate in the next few months or years without significantly interfering
A new technology that uses videogrammetry—overlaying stereo video feeds—to deliver 3D views as big as a building and derive real-time digital measurements of nearly any object with 15-mm precision is being refined and readied for commercial use by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta.
Guest Commentary: With President Obama’s proposal for a new $100 billion infrastructure jobs package still on the table, there has never been a better time for our industry to talk seriously about how we build and design American infrastructure. And, with the U.S. currently ranked at 16th place in terms of global infrastructure – falling from a previous ranking of 6th – engineering and construction firms will be challenged to find new ways to better build or retrofit infrastructure when this new funding becomes available.As we wait for the final infrastructure job bills, the question firms have to ask themselves
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