Electronic Bidding in the Construction Industry

Written on January 18, 2013 by in Uncategorized
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More and more industries are shifting toward paperless operation, digitizing files and forms and moving data from filing cabinets to hard drives and cloud-based storage solutions. Yet while this trend continues to move forward throughout many industries, the construction bidding process seems woefully left behind.

We all know that the bidding process is no simple matter – there are multiple steps and large amounts of communication required for every bid. Because of the complexity of the process, traditional methods have held strong for years, with physical blueprints and printed documentation, personal bid delivery, and a range of other processes that are dependent on real-world interaction and physical documentation. There simply haven’t been enough practical solutions (or industry demand) to shift away from the current model.

Modern advances in collaborative software, online security, and cloud-based storage, however, make electronic bidding a very real possibility for the near future.

As showcased in other sectors of the construction industry, electronic documentation can propel efficiency forward by leaps and bounds, and this could have tremendous impact on expediting the bidding process. Electronic bidding also opens the playing field to non-regional contractors, and allows companies receiving bids to employ totally trackable, real-time communication throughout the process. Changes can be effectively delivered to all bidders, and complete bids can be securely presented over the internet, removing the need for physical delivery and the potential hassles it creates.

Electronic bidding is ultimately inevitable, if the move toward digital communication in other industries is any indication, and it may take a few brave leaders to begin the transition. Fortunately, many of the technologies that make this possible are no longer emergent, but tried and true elements of successfully digitized industries!


 

Beware of Fake Charities

Written on January 2, 2013 by in Uncategorized
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fake charity scamsIn the wake of the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary, there has been a steep increase in foundations and charitable organizations contributing to the relief efforts. Unfortunately, this has also created an opportunity for scam artists and thieves to set up fake charities, luring would-be donators into giving away their money with no intention of using the “donations” for good.

To protect yourself from these fake charities, you should first try to stick with nationally reputable organizations like the Red Cross, or organizations you know personally, like your church or local civic group.

If you’re donating online, there are a few ways to check to see if your charity of choice is indeed reputable. First, try looking up the domain name on a site like www.whois.com – this will let you know where the domain is registered, and to whom. You can also perform a free search of the IRS database to make sure that the charity is registered as a nonprofit.

If you can’t find an organization name, ask about a tax ID number (FEIN), or a copy of their IRS Form 990 – charities are required by law to disclose this information. You can also check www.guidestar.org, a charity review site that functions like the Better Business Bureau.

With hundreds of domains popping up after the Sandy Hook tragedy, potential donators should be skeptical of unfamiliar charity organizations, and should definitely perform some diligent research to make sure their money is actually going to the cause they support. This is an unfortunate reality, but some people want to exploit people’s good intentions by operating fake charities.

If you encounter a charity that seems suspect, or the background research just doesn’t add up to the image of a reputable company, report to your state’s Attorney General or file a complaint at www.ic3.gov.


 

What the iPhone 5 Could Mean for the Construction Industry

Written on September 24, 2012 by in Emergent Technologies, In the workplace
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The release of Apple’s latest iPhone has people buzzing across industries of all types. Because of the impact that these ubiquitous devices have had in the past, representatives from a range of sectors are clamoring to know how this new release is going to benefit their particular industries.

In the construction world, as mobile technology becomes increasingly more important (and competition is fierce), iOS fans are hopeful that the iPhone 5’s new features will set it apart from the other options available.

The two most important features for the construction industry are improved battery life and a faster A6 processor. The boost in battery life is a definite benefit, allowing users more usage without seeking out a charger on a job site. The prospect of a more robust processor, however, could mean vast improvements in proprietary applications for on-the-job iPhone use. The A6 is supposedly twice as fast as the A5 in the iPhone 4S, and this means better load times for highly graphical applications, faster refresh rates, and the capability to run more advanced software. This is, in fact, a more powerful processor than the one featured in the iPad 2. This new model also includes 4G LTE capabilities, improving connectivity when Wi-Fi is unavailable.

Only time will tell how effective the iPhone 5 will be for construction industry professionals, but many of the features indicate a powerful device that could mean another big advancement for on-site mobile use.


 

Cloud-Based Computing Continues to Expand in Construction

Written on August 28, 2012 by in Emergent Technologies, Uncategorized
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As more and more software shifts toward online storage, web-based applications, and generally “cloud-based” services, the construction industry is no exception. In fact, industries that take place largely in the field stand to gain the most from this move to the cloud.

Much like mobile devices, cloud-based computing allows for access to important information on the job site, without the need for portable data storage. Beyond on-site benefits, though, having web-based software and data storage helps smooth out potential difficulties in collaboration – ensuring that different parties are looking at identical data, using same software, etc.

The benefits of current technologies are obvious, and new software continues to be developed to maximize the impact of data available in the cloud, from online document signing like Document Exchange to Sefaira’s sustainable design analysis software. Project managers are able to use a growing number of resources to keep projects on track, and perhaps more importantly, to maintain a smooth transition from conceptual and design stages to actual on-site construction.

It will be interesting to watch this technology continue to expand as it has in a variety of industries. The potential is virtually limitless, and innovative programmers and developers, working closely with construction industry experts, will surely surprise us with unique approaches to long-standing problems (and unforeseen issues as well). So far, cloud-based services have been instrumental in closing the gap between fragmented portions of the construction industry, creating consistency in formatting, communication, and accountability – a trend that is sure to continue.


 

SignNow Lets You Sign Documents From Your Computer or Smartphone

Written on November 22, 2011 by in Emergent Technologies
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As the inevitable shift to digital filing and paperless offices continues to become more and more apparent, documents that require physical signature are becoming a bit of a headache. You have to print, sign, scan, and return – and some offices (let alone home offices) don’t even have printers or scanners anymore. When documents are transferred digitally, it really is quite the hassle to create a physical copy, just to convert it back to its digital form.

Enter SignNow, an application designed specifically to eliminate that issue. SignNow is centered around digital signatures, or more specifically, a digital version of your physical signature.

With SignNow, you can upload a digital document, and draw (with touchscreen, mouse, or trackpad) your signature in the necessary field. You can also type in your signature, or upload an existing image of it. With the uploaded digital document, SignNow also has the option to add text boxes and “sticky notes” as indicators for specific clauses or areas for others to sign.

When you are finished adding signatures, text boxes, and sticky notes, you simply enter an email address and send the freshly signed document on its way. You may also add CC emails and invite others to sign.

SignNow, most importantly, is free. It doesn’t require registration or anything of the sort, you simply upload your document, add what you need to, and move on. There are, of course, options to create an account and store signatures for quick access, and a beta version of a “Pro” account, sure to roll out more features like templates and advanced security features.

The application is also rolling out for iPhone, Android, and iPad, further increasing its convenience and quickness.

For security, emails are encrypted and documents are deleted once sent.  The entire site utilizes high level SSL encryption to maximize the safety of your data.

Even if you aren’t signing documents yourself, uploading a document to SignNow, adding a sticky note indicate the required field, and inviting a user to sign is a great way to get the signatures you need for your own documents.

The whole thing is quite simple, and elegant because of it. The biggest perk of all, as previously mentioned, is that it is completely free, and does not require registration. It shows their intentions, that the company really is after solutions and ease of use.  Next time you need to sign an electronic document, don’t waste time and resources with the print-sign-scan model. Instead give SignNow a shot and see how it works for you.


 
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The “ISP Snooping Bill”

Written on August 2, 2011 by in Online Privacy
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Read time (bolded): 4 minutes

Read time (comprhensive): 6 minutes

 

There seems to be a veritable chasm between the two sides of the “ISP Snooping Bill,” and rightfully so. It is a tense issue, to say the least. The bill, dubiously called the “Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011,” has been making headlines with both sides of the political spectrum, offering staunch support and indignant opposition alike.

The bill, which requires ISPs to retain customer data records for a year – allowing police and government agencies to review them as needed – was approved by the US House of Representatives on Thursday. This means that major internet providers will be collecting, and storing, records of each and every IP address in their system, sites visited, phone numbers, emails addresses, credit card numbers, and anything else that is included in your online data.

This is really nothing new, considering there is already a law in place requiring ISPs to retain data for 90 days, but this bill comes as the face of a much larger issue. To supporters, creating a massive database of American Internet activity is the only way to protect children from predators, the only way to catch consumers and producers of child pornography. To the opposition, however, it is the mighty eye of Big Brother looming more ominously than ever.

The criticisms for the bill cover a wide variety of bases. At the surface, people are inherently opposed to a record of the online actions being available to anyone, let alone the authorities, not necessarily to hide criminal activity, but to protect a general principle of privacy. This is, however, something of a moot point – ISPs have been, and will continue to collect customer records regardless of the outcome of this particular bill.

Questions about the efficacy of the bill, however, are much more telling. First, the scale is immense. There are approximately 270 million Internet users in the United States, and managing records for a year’s worth of activity for each of these users will require a lot of resources. Combing those records for potential criminal activity will require even more. Granted that authorities will need to go through the proper legal channels to be able to search this information (subpoenas, warrants, court orders, etc.), it will still be a large undertaking to extract incriminating evidence from a year’s worth of usage history (not to mention that a law already exists to allow for this kind of data recovery in child pornography cases).

More importantly, the bill’s provisions restrict the required record keeping to commercial ISPs and customer accounts, meaning that open Wi-FI in libraries and restaurants will still allow users to surf anonymously. Also, the bill has no provisions for wireless data, so smartphone histories won’t be tracked either.

There are, of course, ways of browsing the Internet anonymously from home, whether through Tor or another VPN tool, and you could always go the way of 4g wireless in your home (if it’s available), or simply do all of your browsing on your phone or at the local coffee shop!

The question we’re all forced to ask is this: What is the point? If the effort is being put forth to keep tabs on Internet usage nation-wide, why no wireless provisions? Why give the bill such a “buzz word” type title, when the same records will be used for fraud, theft, and other web-based crimes?  Even if the genesis of this legislation is rooted in good intentions, in protecting innocent children, its current face is an ugly one, appearing to be a poorly masked attempt to collect citizens’ personal data, and keep a closer watch on society at large.  


 

30 Years of MS-DOS: A Retrospective

Written on July 28, 2011 by in Uncategorized
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Read time (bolded): 3 minutes

Read time (comprehensive): 5 minutes

 

Strip away the 3D rendering and the translucent menus. Forget about drop down menus, scroll bars, and handy application icons. Abandon your mouse. Get rid of all the flash of the OS interface as we know it, and look back three decades to that iconic blinking cursor.

It has indeed been 30 years since MS-DOS first came to the personal computer, marking the beginning of a revolution in computer use.  The command-line-based operating system came from the Microsoft purchase of 86-DOS in 1981 (for a mere $75,000), and has gone through numerous versions, up to, and including, bootstrapping capabilities in recent Windows operating systems.

 

The crazy part is: DOS is still relative today. Some basic systems (often inventory or POS systems) use DOS based programming for day-to-day operations. Even the command line approach that early PC users familiarized themselves with is used regularly, and is incorporated into every Windows OS. We can also thank DOS for the standard “C:” hard drive nomenclature (A and B were for floppies).

It has been a long road from MS-DOS’s blinking cursor to the graphic, multilayered Windows 7.

Windows 1.0 (released in 1985) was essentially a way to run multiple MS-DOS processes at once. Incorporating a 16-bit graphic interface was the first step toward evolving into Windows as we know it today.  With each subsequent version, new applications were added, the graphics became a little more polished. By the time Windows 95 was released, Windows and MS-DOS had become fully integrated with one another. 

Fast forward to Windows ME, and the first instances of MS-DOS reduced to a pared- down boot-loader, and its successor Windows XP, and we start to see the changing times, where old DOS programs have to be run in emulators or virtual DOS machines.

While the newest Windows operating systems have all but abandoned their ties to original MS-DOS (development stopped in 2000), any old-school PC user can’t help but remember the days of command-line prompts and floppy disks as a milestone of the computing age, a point at which personal computing really began to come into its own.

So happy 30th, MS-DOS, you stand as a pillar of the Bill Gates empire, a forefather of the digital age. May your ominous cursor blink on in our memories forever.


 

The Smartphone Revolution

Written on July 19, 2011 by in Emergent Technologies
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Read time (bolded): 5 minutes

Read time (comprehensive): 3 minutes 

 

There is no question that we are in the midst of a mobile Internet explosion. Smartphones, namely Android and iPhone products, are flying off the shelves in record numbers (not to mention tablets/iPads).  The advent of 4G networks, incorporated Flash software, and the ever-increasing app market, people are using their cellphones (if we can even call them that any more) for more than we ever imagined possible.

The numbers are staggering.  There are over 4 billion mobile phones in use around the world. Around 25% of them are smartphones. This means a billion people have Internet access in their pockets. This equates to 250 million mobile Facebook users, 100 million mobile Twitter users (that’s 50% of all Twitter users), and 200 million mobile Youtube plays every day. People all over the world are using their mobile devices for games, social networking, news, weather…you name it.

Projections indicate that mobile Internet use will surpass desktop Internet use in the next few years. This comes as no surprise, given the popularity (almost social necessity) of the smartphone, and of course, the ability to use it anywhere and everywhere. Barcode readers and instant Google access allow consumers to do product research in the moment, news apps and games occupy subway riders, sharing photos or tweeting from a social setting is as easy as reaching in your pocket.

The rate of expansion also comes as no surprise. In the era of high-speed desktop Internet and massive social networks – an era where “Google” has become a verb, people the world over are already familiar with online interaction. The slow growth experienced by the earliest Internet providers is essentially the precursor to the rapid growth of mobile Internet. The concepts are the same; the interface is just different.

What are the implications of all of this though? As a culture, it makes us more connected, more aware of what’s going on around us (unless all you can use your phone for is Angry Birds), and it most definitely makes us see the world in a different way. Instead of just making mental notes of unique situations, we instead tweet about it, take a photo, and upload it to Google+!

It also has a way of making us disconnected from the people around us, lost in touch screen euphoria, ignoring the person standing next to you to text someone on the other side of the country.  

Mobile Internet has also become the avenue of choice for advertising firms, using “mobile only” promotional campaigns to capitalize on the mobile sensation.  We know that advertising trends follow social trends, and that can only mean a continued increase in mobile advertising, whether we like it or not.

This much is clear: mobile Internet access is changing the way we go about our daily lives – the way we socialize, the way we do business.  Whether for better or for worse, only time will tell. 


 

Battle of The Servers: Cloud vs. Dedicated

Written on July 12, 2011 by in Uncategorized
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Read time (bolded): 6 Minutes

Read time (comprehensive): 8 minutes

 

As the Internet expands and new technologies develop (as they always do), there must be a debate over new versus old; whether a new technology is too unreliable, or an old technology is too archaic. Presently, that very argument is taking place regarding hosting technology. The two sides of this arguments?  The cloud vs. the physical, dedicated server.

Dedicated servers are just that, dedicated. It’s really one of the primary advantages of using physical server equipment to host your website – the equipment is specialized and customizable. You (or an expert) can build the server you want, with your choice of operating system and exact specifications.  For certain hosting needs, dedicating a lightning fast server to a singular project is the most effective way to host.

Purchasing this kind of equipment can be quite costly, however. Because of the costs associated with purchasing physical server equipment, most lease a server from a hosting company. When leasing, you still get a dedicated, physical server at your disposal, but maintenance, upgrades, and troubleshooting become part of the service you purchase, instead of your own (major) responsibility.

The trouble with dedicated servers comes with change. Leasing a server with a certain amount of RAM or bandwidth may not stand up to the increasing speed and sophistication of modern web development. A dedicated server is “stuck in its ways” so to speak, without physical upgrades. A sudden influx of traffic could potentially go beyond what your dedicated server is capable of handling.

This problem has been resolved, in theory, with the advent of cloud-based hosting. Instead of a singular, static system, cloud computing is amorphous, directing necessary resources to the areas that need them most. Like leasing a physical server, purchasing hosting services with a cloud-based server takes the technical maintenance out of the customers’ hands. The difference lies in scalability.

The “cloud” may be made up of thousands of physical servers, and within that cloud are hundreds (or more) hosted websites, each individually owned and operated. Depending on the traffic or necessary bandwidth, the cloud server is capable of allocating resources accordingly.

While this technology is gaining popularity, it isn’t without flaws. Some complain that making sites essentially compete for the cloud’s resources is slowing the whole process. Part of the problem of steadily increasing popularity is the wave of new users vying for the same service.

Security remains an issue for some, feeling understandable hesitation about uploading their data into a massive system on some far away network of servers and other hosted content. There have even been some security scares in the media.

At the end of the day, choosing a hosting service has to be based on what’s right for the material you wish to host. As a small site looking to grow, cloud hosting may be just right. Maintaining a massive database or company brain may just be a little too intensive for present-day cloud technology, and a high-speed, dedicated server might be the ticket.

 

The one thing that we can rely on is that the technology will continue to develop.

 


 

The Internet Regulation Debate

Written on July 5, 2011 by in Emergent Technologies, Network Security, Online Privacy
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Read time (bolded): 4 minutes

Read time (comprehensive): 7 minutes

 

The conversation has been going on for years, but in the past several months, a particularly hot topic has come back into the public discussion. That topic, subject of much debate around the world, is Internet regulation.

The issue is on the tongues of political and economic leaders alike, with French President Nicolas Sarkozy calling for tighter digital copyright laws and general “civility” at the last G8 Conference, and the music industry clamoring for heftier anti-piracy laws.

Of course the online community, the users themselves, are just as adamant (if not more so) about keeping the Internet a free marketplace, as unregulated as possible.

Both sides of the argument are ripe with strong points.

The music industry has taken a massive hit from online piracy, as most people are aware, and the film and publishing industries are no exception. From the early days of Napster and the beginnings of mass file sharing, major music labels say they’ve lost $55 Billion in revenue. Even as the industry has tried to adapt, users still find a way to access entertainment without going through the industry approved channels.

President Sarkozy and other regulation advocates have more delicate issues on their minds. They are out to protect children from online predators, to stop the flow of underage pornography, and to squash hateful and violence-advocating social groups from spreading a message of intolerance. They are also concerned with online economic practices, based in part on the toll piracy has taken on the entertainment industries, but also to divert online companies from creating monopolies or conducting business within present regulatory loopholes.

While many of these concerns are valid, and do come from a desire to protect public interests, much of the online community remains opposed to regulation of any kind.

Part of the opposition is, of course, based on simple principle, that the Internet has had a long history of unregulated activity, and the innovations we’ve seen in the past two decades are directly related to that lack of interference. Major players in online companies like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Eric Schmidt argue that Internet regulation will cripple innovation.

Those opposed to regulation supply a multitude of reasons to keep the Internet neutral and open. Some argue that the Internet is a representation of society itself, and that censoring hateful or lewd content is not fighting the actual problem, only its online presence. By choosing to censor some areas of society because of potentially offensive content, regulators would be opening the floodgates of controversy over what content is deemed acceptable and what is not. In short, it becomes an ideological issue.

Perhaps the best argument against government intervention comes from Eric Schmidt himself, saying that technology will “move faster than governments,” and that we should look to technology to control undesirable online content.

It’s a tough call for most of us. The online CEOs are of course fighting against regulation of their industry, and government leaders are on soapboxes to defend the nation’s youth from the dangers of the Internet. Somewhere in the middle is the rest of the online community, and we’re in a great position to voice our opinions. What’s more important? Safety and security? Regulation and standardization? Or is it innovation and expansion? Neutrality and freedom?

 

 

 


 
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