Photo Courtesy of Georgia Institute of Technology Augmented Reality is one of the hottest trends on smartphones, with applications such as Layar and Wikitude providing real-time text and graphics that augment whatever users see in their cameras' viewfinder or browsers.Architects and engineers are also working with AR, increasingly deploying more precise uses of the technology to integrate 3D graphics and models into real-world views or to facilitate total immersion in a design project.But since AR technology works with GPS coordinates that rely on a device's satellite access to pinpoint a user's location, many AR apps work best outdoors. For facilities

Rendering courtesy of Ena Cheung/Thornton Tomasetti Investigators are using forensic information modeling to study structural failures, such as the 2007 highway bridge collapse in Minneapolis. Red color indicates steel corrosion.  Structural engineers are harnessing technology's power to learn from failures and ultimately improve the built environment. New interactive digital databases—similar to YouTube, SharePoint and Wikipedia—offer the potential to improve codes and practice, agree engineers. With global engineering research, knowledge and failure data at their fingertips, designers are able to connect the dots as never before."We are on the brink of [an information] revolution," said engineer Santiago Pujol at the 2012

Rendering courtesy of Apple Lights On Maiden, N.C., data center will draw power from a 20-MW solar farm and 5-MW fuel-cell installation. Related Links: EDITORS' CHOICE & GREEN PROJECT: Facebook Data Center Apple is hoping to get a boost from the sun to power its rapidly growing cloud services.Having completed a $1-billion, 500,000-sq-ft data center in Maiden, N.C., in late 2011, the computing giant recently began construction on a 20-MW solar farm. Along with a new 5-MW fuel-cell installation, the company plans to use the farm to supply all the energy needed to run the facility.The data center, which was

Guest Commentary: There are nearly 70 million smartphones in use in the US (Quora Research), and by some estimates, tablets are set to overtake PC use. The mobile internet is burgeoning, devices and platforms are proliferating, and no businesses are more impacted by this digital revolution than those industry sectors that are inherently mobile. Architects and engineers particularly belong to that cohort of workers who can hardly be categorized as having “desk jobs.” They’re on the go when they’re on the job, often bristling with more than one mobile digital device. Google won’t disclose how many of its searches are mobile,

Related Links: Internet of Things' Is Changing Our World Shawn Pressley, PSP, is a civil engineer with 13 years of experience in project management systems and development. As vice president of information technology for construction manager Hill International, Inc., he oversees technology decisions in addition to his other duties with the Marleton, N.J.-based firm. His expertise includes design, planning, implementation and execution of project management software. He also specializes in implementation of financial accounting, CRM, employee relationship management and partner management systems.Although he's a fan of tablets and their potential to transform construction, Pressley has become wary of jobsites adopting

Courtesy of Boeing 'Spoofing,' or intentionally generating fake GPS signals, is a threat that governments have yet to be addressed. An American bat-wing RQ-170 Sentinel—a U.S. military drone—was flying over Iran en route to its Afghanistan base in December when, Iranian military engineers claim, they reconfigured the drone's global-positioning-system coordinates to fool it into landing, intact, on Iranian soil. The U.S. military claims the drone simply malfunctioned.On Feb. 22, GPS industry experts from around the world gathered in Teddington, U.K., to discuss the system's vulnerabilities. Bob Cockshott, a director at Britain's Intelligent Communications Technology Knowledge Transfer Network and a conference

Photo courtesy of Chicago Dept. of Aviation Chicago workers are shown working on O'Hares $6-billion modernization program. Related Links: Congress Clears Long-Delayed FAA Bill After 23 short-term funding extensions that dragged out over five years, the $63-billion Federal Aviation Administration authorization bill that President Obama recently signed is giving the aviation industry plenty to cheer—and plenty to loathe.On the bright side, experts say, the bill provides a predictable funding outlook until 2016 after years of uncertainty and a 14-day shutdown last summer, which put many airport projects permanently on hold. It also authorizes $2.7 billion annually for the FAA's facilities-and-equipment

Courtesy of ABEM A retired engineer uses an out-of-production device to read very-low-frequency radio waves to find water trapped in underground rock. In California, a retired electrical engineer has revived an out-of-production sonar device that uses very low frequency, or VLF, radio waves to locate underground water, and, as recently as Feb. 15, he has been successful. Using improved software, he found water where others had failed.Richard Varian, owner of Survey4Water, Willits, Calif., uses the WADI VLF-sonar device—developed over 25 years ago by ABEM, Sundbyberg, Sweden—to find water trapped in rock fractures and cavities."The fractures in the rock are where

Photo by Tom Sawyer Drag and drop Form builder for Android device lets users with no programming skills create apps. App development for mobile devices is surging, like lines of surfers picking up big sets of waves.Economists are beginning to notice "the app economy," saying that it is now responsible for 466,000 jobs in the U.S., up from zero in 2007 when the iPhone was introduced, according to a report published on Feb. 7 by TechNet. The report is based on research by Michael Mandel of South Mountain Economics LLC, a consulting firm that tracks the impact of innovation and

Related Links: Key Federal Technical Committee Says No Practical Solution to LightSquared's GPS Interference LightSquared Pushes for FCC Decision on GPS Network The Federal Communications Commission is preparing to turn out the lights on LightSquared's proposed $14-billion national 4G broadband network, following findings from a key technical committee that "there is no practical way to mitigate potential interference" with the nation's GPS systems.The FCC will open a comment period today on the recommendation from the National Telecommunications And Information Administration that the launch of the network should be killed.“NTIA, the federal agency that coordinates spectrum uses for the military and