New Technology of the Week | A Laser in your Mobile Phone

Setting aside the Austin Powers "laser" jokes that come to mind, Measurement Devices, Ltd of England may have some pretty monumental technology on their hands. Even though it only weighs 43 grams (just over 1.5 oz). 

"Powered by a standard USB connector, the tiny Micro Laser Module (MLM), believed to be the smallest in the world, requires less than 70 mA to make hundreds of measurements a second of objects within a 120-metre radius and is now being marketed to original equipment manufacturers some of which MDL hopes will develop the software and interface so the micro technology can be applied to different products."

Such a laser could be incorporated into devices like smartphones to revolutionize smartphone camera imagery and measurement capabilities. 

Click here to read more about smartphone laser technology

New Technology of the Week | The Future of Transportation

No need for explanation today. Just a photo. 

 

Click here to learn more about Google's self-driving car technology

New Technology of the Week | Yapp

To put it simply, Yapp will help anyone and everyone to develop a mobile app. It's not meant to overpopulate the iTunes App Store nor the Android Market but rather to allow mobile users to essentially create interactive mini mobile sites for events, interests, etc. to share wtih family and friends. 

"In the early going--Yapp is in private beta right now--it is focusing on apps built around events. So users can create new apps for things like weddings, conferences, birthday parties, and the like. And Yapp thinks that most people will be able to build their new tool in about ten minutes."

Click here to read more about Yapp, the Mobile App...App

The Must-Have Technology Tools for Construction Professionals

AGC TechBrief, April 2012
By James Benham, President of JB Knowledge Technologies, Inc., Makers of SmartBidNet

Depending on your age, the technology on your desk has probably evolved quite a bit since your first day there. Whether your beeper was going off at your hip or you were punching away at an encyclopedia-sized laptop, technology today makes those days seem archaic in retrospect. But the best part is there’s a good chance you haven’t even seen the best of today.

Every day, an innovation emerges with the potential to propel your work day into the Jetsons’ era faster than you could have predicted. Many of these developments will be bought by the likes of Google or Facebook, who will then find a way to incorporate them into something you already use or an unreachable luxury for high-class nerds. But some will find their way into what I will call your "Tech Toolbox." These are the technologies that can and will impact personal and corporate bottom lines and whose value far outweighs the minimal capital investment required to employ them. Most are cloud-based, some are free, some are $1.99 in the app store and some are business suites with annual subscriptions well worth the price tag, but all of them can transform your work day.

Click here to read the full article from AGC TechBrief

Cool Technology of the Week | Wavii

Wavii's all encompassing tag line/mission is to "Make Facebook out of Google." Essentially compiling all the information across the internet (including search engines, social platforms, and accessible applications) for any given topic and arranging that information into an asthetically pleasing and navigable Facebook-esque newsfeed. It's a service you read about and go, "Huh, I guess we don't really have anything like that, do we?"  

"With the company's current service, for instance, users can set up a newsfeed dedicated to a particular person or topic. The service will alert you when anything big happens with Kim Kardashian, Mitt Romney, or IBM, and it will do so in plain English... Aoun and his engineering team have built a system that analyzes hundreds of thousands of articles, blogs, tweets, and other websites as they're posted to the net and then tags them with metadata that describes the information they hold."

However, the problem, critics are saying, is not getting all this information aggregated in real-time, it's making sure the information is qualified and relevant. Such an application is very enticing to the likes of trend abusing spammers like those on Twitter or content farms more concerned about selling ad space than providing useful content. We thinks they are bound to fight the same good fight as Google in sorting through information. But if they can figure that out, Wavii has our vote.

Click here to read more about Wavii's technology

Collaboration, Integration And Interoperability Through The Cloud

Featured in the April 2012 Jobsite123 Newsletter
Written by James Benham, President of JB Knowledge Technologies, Inc.

The evolution of technology in your office probably looked something like this: copy machine, fax machine, microwave-sized personal computer, inter-office email, bulletin board systems, really slow websites with lots of blue hyperlinks, loaf of bread-sized cell phones…until finally instant messaging, laptops, smart phones, printer/scanners and now the occasional tablet came to save the day. No one wants to remember the black screen and green letters – but it’s important to understand how far we’ve come.

Now what exactly made it possible for you to abandon that pager and flip back and forth between your Angry Birds app and this article on your smart phone? Internet? Laptops? Steve Jobs? What if I told you they were all a part of this term everyone is throwing around as if it’s brand new… The Cloud?

Click here to read the full article

The Future of Online Plan Rooms

Constructech Magazine
April 6, 2012

The plan room has evolved from paper, to FTP (file transfer protocol) sites, to online collaborative platforms where partners can download files, and print only when necessary. The online plan room opens the door to new technology capabilities, such as integrations with other technology solutions.

This week, Barryhund Online Plan Services, www.barryhund.com, Sacramento, Calif., a Web-based plan room solution, and SmartBidNet, which is developed by JB Knowledge Technologies, www.smartbidnet.com, College Station, Texas, announced new integrations between the two platforms.

Click here to read the full article

Announcing SmartBidNet Integration with Barryhund Online Plan Services

COLLEGE STATION, TX (PRWEB) April 05, 2012

SmartBidNet construction bid software, a product of JB Knowledge Technologies, Inc., recently announced its latest industry alliance with fellow solutions provider, Barryhund Online Plan Room Services(OPS). Over 45 plan rooms across California, Montana, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah and Washington use Barryhund’s OPS platform to distribute details of over 45,000 projects per year to general contractors andsubcontractors subscribing to each plan room. The integration between Barryhund and SmartBidNet, launching this summer, will connect project news from Barryhund’s plan rooms across the United States with private bidding in the SmartBidNet system.

Click here to read the full article

Cool Technology of the Week | Project Glass

Anything we try to write or summarize about this technology won't do it justice. So we'll just direct you straight to the source.

Click here to watch the video about Project Glass that will quite literally change your view of the future

ENR Readers Recommend Their Favorite Technology, JBKnowledge's SmartBidNet Software Among Them

JBKnowledge's web-based construction bid software SmartBidNet was recently featured in Engineering News Record's "Recommended Reading" release, announcing:

"Products and services that ENR readers say they are now using with good results that have potential to improve their jobs, or even the entire industry."

Click here to see the entire list

18 handy tablet apps for AEC professionals | Building Design + Construction

The SmartBidNet Construction Bid iOS App, a product of JBKnowledge, made a recent Building Design + Construction list of helpful AEC industry tablet apps for everyday design, construction, BIM/IT and LEED processes. 

Click here to read the full list

Cool Technology of the Week | Turning Tweets into Toilet Paper

Alright, so this week's "Tech of the Week" may not increase your company's ROI but it will certainly make for some entertaining bathroom breaks. 

"The service, called Shitter, will take one or more feeds from your Twitter account and print those tweets on toilet paper you can then display and use proudly in your favorite restroom."

Or in your CEO's restroom. At $35 per pack of four rolls, you'll want to choose your Twitter feed carefully. 

"Mashable did the math, and if Shitter’s rolls of TP have the standard 75 sheets you’d be shelling out about 8.5 cents a sheet to drop your latest tweets off at the pool."

Click here to learn more about this new Twitterific technology

JB Knowledge Software Product Wins Constructech 2012 Commercial Top Product Award

College Station, TX (PRWEB) March 27, 2012

JB Knowledge Technologies, Inc., a leading information technology solutions provider, announced that its SmartBidNet construction bid software is a recipient of Constructech’s Top Products Commercial Award in the Trusted Products category for 2012. This esteemed award recognizestechnology solutions that demonstrate the greatest innovations geared toward the commercial construction market.

Click here to read the full article

New Technology of the Week | Tattoos that connect to your mobile phone

"In a recent filing to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Nokia (NOK) described a concept for using magnetic ink embedded in the skin to interact with a specific electromagnetic field put off by mobile phones."

That's right. No more missing phone calls because you didn't hear your phone ring or didn't feel it vibrate from wherever it may be. Alerts to your phone can be transmitted to the ink in your skin, and can even be varied to differentiate between calls, messages, emails, etc. And for those not ready for a tattoo, Nokia proposes a badge or label that can be applied to skin temporarily. 

Click here to read more about this tattoo and mobile phone integration 

Cool Technology of the Week | JBKnowledge | Self-Assembling Structures

Not only does MIT researcher Skylar Tibbits have an awesome name, he also has an awesome vision, shared this past September at TED. He points out that while skyscrapers take an average of 2.5 years to complete, DNA can replicate rougly 3 billion base pairs in about an hour. Skylar believes the future is in our learning to manufacture such replication and self-guidance, so instead of building things, like DNA, we let them build themselves.

"There’s new possibilities for self-assembly, replication, repair in our physical structures, our buildings, machines. … Imagine if our buildings, our bridges, machines, all of our bricks could actually compute."

He explains that by decoding the complexity of our assembly processes, learning to program those sequences into materials, linking this system to an energy source for continuous operation, and having  a feedback system for error detection - we can create materials that construct themselves. In the video at the link below, he even shows some of the reconfigurable, programmable robots they've already managed to have do just that.

His explanation of gates and sequencing may make your brain hurt, but the implications of "self-assembly" are staggering to think about...

Click here to learn more about this self-assembling technology