All search engines are not created equal, claims the developer of Yometa.com, a “visual search engine” that simultaneously searches any term on Yahoo, Bing and Google and then displays the results all at once as pins on a Venn diagram. Image Courtesy Of Yometa.com Color-coded by search engine Yometa's algorithm ranks the top results of each search engine in sets, according to relevance. Results that appear in the Venn overlaps most likely contain the looked-for information. By hovering the mouse over any pin, a bubble pops up to offer information about the corresponding website. It is surprising how often highly

High-speed, high-resolution laser scanners that monitor the clearance envelope of railroad tracks have been available to European and Asian companies for some time. Now, a rail track scanner has been introduced to North America that is designed to capture track geometry and track envelope data in one pass, creating a 3D point cloud. The product claims 3mm accuracy. Photo : Courtesy Of Amberg Technologies Employed this GRP5000 to survey New York’s East Side Access, and No. 7 subway and was one of the first engineering firms to use it. “The amount of time required on the track is decreased,” says

To gain full advantage of innovations in technology, the construction industry must sometimes appropriate technology that was not developed specifically for construction. Visolu, a photo management app, is one such technology. Image courtesy of Underground Imaging Technologies Berlin-based Pixolution uses visual-image compression to find, sort and simultaneously display thousands of photos on most mobile devices (iPad, iPhone, Android). Visolu can arrange the photos in a list view, a grid view or a color view, which groups photos by visual similarity and ends up looking like a pointillist painting by Seurat. Among other applications, construction managers could employ Visolu to find,

Since subsurface utility maps are so essential to reducing risk on many construction jobs, research continues to improve buried-utility detection and mapping tools. Image courtesy of Underground Imaging Technologies Combined sensors help map buried features in difficult soil conditions Several concepts were showcased at a conference produced by FIATECH, an industry consortium working to improve project delivery through technology, in Phoenix in late April. One presenter, James Anspach, chairman of the American Society of Civil Engineers' codes and standards committee, noted that the U.S. has trillions of dollars invested in some 20 million miles of known, buried utilities. “Existing utilities

Conferences are driven by themes, and the most telling themes are expressed by succinct quotes. Presenters at ENR's FutureTech conference, held in New York City in early April, offered plenty of both as they outlined key takeaways about construction and tech. Photo: Art Credit Here “Government didn’t put the data up. It just started to appear,” said Duncan Wilson, describing the radiation reports flowing from personal Geiger counters in Japan and appearing on the site www.failedrobot.com. A quotation from science-fiction writer and visionary William Gibson—“The future is already here; it's just not evenly distributed”—was referenced more than once. That quotation

The annual marathon in Baltimore is a tricky affair to coordinate among the city’s agencies, especially amid a full spate of construction and infrastructure projects. Conflicts between new construction and the race route are a key challenge for officials to manage. Enter Envista, a web-accessible infrastructure coordination software system that Baltimore’s chief of design and construction calls a game changer. Image: Tiop Courtesy of Envista Envista displays integrated construction scheduling data from public and private utilites, municipalities and highway agencies on an online map to prevent conflicts and synch operations. “Last year, we coordinated the Baltimore Marathon on Envista,” says

The draft horse pulling workflow into thepaperless world is the open-standard, portable document format, or PDF. Over the years, that plodder has become more and more like a thoroughbred racer. Developers at Bluebeam Software Inc., Pasadena, Calif., came out of the gate on March 22 with Bluebeam Revu 9, their latest release of PDF products crafted for design and construction. The company says V.9 has more than 30 enhanced features to streamline PDF markup, viewing, processing, collaboration and sharing. While some of the features—such as 3D viewing and manipulation—play catch-up with the competition, at least one is a new capability:

This app is not a toy; it ’ s a powerful, easy-to-use structural engineering calculator with ambitions to reach the clouds. Image: Courtesy of Iproblue Tech The developer, IProBlue Tech., Fort Lee, N.J., says [steel hd], for the iPad, is based on a database comprising American Institute of Steel Construction manuals. It also has libraries with all the structural-steel profiles available in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. An Android version is on the way. The tools are parametric calculators based on the AISC libraries 13.2, 13.2-SI, 13.1.1, 13.1.1 SI, 13, LRFD 1 through 3, ASD 6 through 9 and

Imagine this: You are a general contractor out on a job and you need to access your private network of subcontractors to select the ones you want to invite to bid. Thanks to SmartBidNet’s 99-cent app, which recently hit the iTunes store’s “what’s hot” list, you can use your iPhone or iPad to get the process started. The app, a mobile version of bidding site smartbidnet.com, is available to subscribers. It works with contact lists to send e-mails to the subs of your choice or to synchronize your list organized by services provided and needed. “We finally have the hardware

Retrofitting a building, especially an old building, is one way to improve energy efficiency and even attain LEED certification. But hiring professionals to research efficiency solutions can get pricey. Boston-based start-up Retroficiency Inc. has produced software that streamlines the process and—more importantly—saves money. “Our goal is not necessarily to replace the guy going out auditing,” says company founder Bennett Fisher. The goal is to “put a tool in his hands to make him 25 to 50% more efficient.” The software can be used in pre-bid evaluations. It can be deployed to predict the current energy consumption of a building, based