What do we talk about when we talk about mobile? Increasingly, the landscape is muddled. At a host of technology conferences over recent months: ad:tech San Francisco, Advertising Week, IAB MIXX and even the Mobile Media Summit, not once did a speaker explain specifically what was being talked about when using the term "mobile."To contextualize any discussion of mobile marketing or media these days, the entire arena must be addressed with a much greater level of specificity. Raise this point with people who live and breathe mobile and the first reaction is, "Oh! I get it. You mean whether it's
Courtesy of Fiatech Matthew May, opening day Keynote speaker at Fiatech 2012. Related Links: Procurement Key Tech Goal for Fiatech in 2012 What are the secrets to innovation? How can the construction industry find new ways of innovating tools for the trade or to improve productivity? Sometimes, the answer is not in the black, but in the white space between the lines. You just have to challenge how you think about innovating.That's the word from Matthew May, a popular motivational speaker on business processes, who also writes a blog and columns for the small business website OpenForum.com. Sometimes, he says
By Tom Sawyer Insight-sharing about advancing the effectiveness of IT in project delivery is non-stop, focused and intense during breaks at Fiatech2012 in Miami, Fla. During formal sessions things really heat up. Related Links: Fiatech: Collaborating to Advance Technology and Innovation By any measure, 2011 was a great year for the construction technology consortium Fiatech, with over 20 active projects that year and 17 deliverables buttressed by industry advancements, says Ray Topping, PE, the director of Fiatech.Speaking at Fiatech's annual technology conference and showcase, held at the famed Doral Hotel Resort in Miami, Topping says 2012 is shaping up to
By Zlatko Batistich Roof-mounted air handling units feed outside air to supply ducts to deliver cooling for a unique data center located on the urban NJ waterfront that is cooled by 100% outside air. The U.S. Green Building Council is drafting its first set of standards for data-center projects as the growing sector has struggled to meet energy-efficiency benchmarks.The U.S. data-center construction market increased to about $15 billion today from about $5 billion in 2000. According to a study commissioned by computer software giant Microsoft, that number is expected to increase to $20 billion by 2020. But the amount of
Photo Courtesy of Sunlink Corp. The 20-ft by 20-ft shake table at PEER is the largest multidirectional shaking table in the U.S. For the first time, a solar racking manufacturer tested its ballast-only roof-mounted racking system on U.C. Berkeley's Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER) shaking table in Richmond, Calif., and it appears to have passed with flying colors.The March 5 test "provided us with information on how our roof mounting system acted [when] not connected to a roof," said Mike Williams, senior vice president-engineering for SunLink, San Rafael, Calif. The product "acted like we thought it would," he added.SunLink
Photo courtesy of columbia university SENSING GREATNESS Cable mock-up under tension is encased within a custom-made corrosion chamber. Positive results from field tests of a corrosion detection and remote monitoring technology for suspension bridge cables have raised researchers' hopes the tools could be used for testing the health of bridges worldwide.The test confirmed that "we have the tools to reliably assess and quantify the level of corrosion on a suspension bridge for damage assessments," says Raimondo Betti, a civil engineering professor at Columbia University and lead project engineer on the $1.8-million collaborative research study. Before, the process involved subjective judgment
Related Links: Readers Recommend Wish List: What Readers Want the Most in Infotech What Readers Like About Their Infotech Today The information technology satisfaction index among ENR readers is high, but if past is prologue, users' bullish expectations for the future may be too optimistic, particularly with respect to their greatest desire: true interoperability of all their software and systems.That's the conclusion after studying 445 responses to a survey conducted in late February by ENR. We asked readers to tell us about the best new tech tools they use now as well as the tech tools they would like to
FIRST READ COMMENTARY: Providing valuable, credible information can be the foundation of a sound business model, something the earliest online business learned in a hurry.Take Autobytel, for example. The web’s first car-buying website launched in 1995, supplying consumers with information they’d never before had access to: how much automotive dealers paid for new cars. “The dealers hated it,” recalls Thomas Heshion, a former executive.Autobytel will always be remembered as the first dot-com to advertise on the Super Bowl, but it’s thriving more than a decade later because it supplies information that helps car buyers better understand what they’re buying, and
With creative use of laser scanning, Alberici Constructors has shaved four weeks off its schedule to install two 120-ton steel vertical-lift gates that are part of a $165-million complex.
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
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