Below is a quote from the announcement at AECForensics.com: After a lot of work behind the scenes, I’m proud to announce that AEC Forensics is now fully operational. I have scoured the internet and continue to do so daily, selecting and curating the content that appears here. Since no other website has risen to the challenge of compiling news about our industry (construction defect litigation, construction law, bad faith, green forensics, etc.), I have thrown my hat in the ring. Those of you that know me personally are aware that I am a full time employee and shareholder of KPA Associates, Inc., a San Diego-based architectural firm that provides expert witness testimony in construction defect matters, in addition to ADA compliance and residential/commercial/institutional design services. In other words, this website is an avocation for me and something I pursue solely because of my passion for this industry. Admittedly not everything [Continue Reading...]

Image via Wikipedia Mark Frauenfelder is a man of many talents: Founded bOING bOING, a zine in 1988 with partner/wife, Carla Sinclair bOING bOING beget BoingBoing.net in 1995 as a basic website which became a weblog in 2000 Was an editor at Wired in the 90s Has published several books Is editor-in-chief of MAKE Magazine And as part of the research for his latest book, Made by Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World, Frauenfelder can add a few more: cigar box luthier, chicken coop constructor, and espresso machine modder. Here is an interview with Reason.TV to discuss the new book and the relevance of doing-it-yourself in a world of point-and-click:

Image by oddsock via Flickr After a lot of wrangling of PHP, HTML, a tiny bit of JAVA, a little CSS, and redirecting some RSS, BLHill.net is now on a new server running the latest version of WordPress. WordPress 3.0 is a massive upgrade from the previous version. For me the most important part was merging of WPMU, or WordPress Multi-User, into the code base. This allowed me to set up one installation of WordPress to host all of my websites. I am only running a few sites right now, but plan to add more. Some people are running thousands of sites using a single WordPress installation including WordPress.com, which hosts over 100,000 blogs. Now let’s talk about whom this release is named after – Thelonious Monk. Thelonious Sphere Monk was a jazz pianist. But saying Monk was just a jazz pianist is like saying Steve Wozniak is just a [Continue Reading...]

Museum Mishap sounds like the name of a hipster/indie-rock band combining a MIDI Accordian, a keytar and some claves… The cable holding a model of Foucault’s Pendulum snapped last month at the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris, sending the 60-pound ball crashing to the ground. It was permanently dented in the fall. Léon Foucault’s 1851 experiment remains a mesmerizing evidence that the Earth does, in fact, rotate. Scientists were aware of this, but the fact that the pendulum swings through 180 degrees over the course of a day provides tangible proof that we are on a planet spinning in space. The Umberto Eco novel, Foucault’s Pendulum, made the mid-19th-century physics demonstration famous. The novel even opens at the Musée des Arts et Métiers. The pendulum played a key role in the high-literary conspiracy involving the Knights Templar at the heart of the novel. Via Geoff Brumfiel at Nature [Continue Reading...]

Image by Paraflyer via Flickr Although I’m not sure how advantageous a roof deck meeting area will be in Chicago during the winter months, I still love this example of an innovative working environment. This sort of flexibility and creativity goes a long way to improve morale but may not be immediately quantifiable. Chicago lawyer Michael Childress conducted four meetings Wednesday on the rooftop deck of his law firm’s new offices. The outdoor deck on the 13th floor at 500 N. Dearborn Street also serves as a lunch spot for employees of Childress, Duffy, Goldblatt Ltd. “We had a happy hour up here kind of spontaneously,” Childress said, adding that a Friday night movie event on the deck is planned. During the coming months, a “tagging” event is expected. Teams of employees will be set loose with spray paint cans to cover sections of the deck in whatever designs they [Continue Reading...]

Found this via @builders_pal… This is such a great idea! IDSA LiftPod Gold AwardCategory: Commercial & IndustrialDesign: Geoff Campbell and Jason Watson of JLG Industries (Australia); Hugh Stark, Frank Fornasari, Sandy McNeil, Mark Armstrong, and Oliver Kratzer The LiftPod is a personal, portable aerial work platform designed as an alternative to ladders. Powered by any standard 18-volt cordless drill or an optional power pack, the LiftPod gives users a 360-degree range of motion at a working height of up to 14 feet. It can be assembled by one person in less than 30 seconds, and because of its light weight, it can be moved around a job site by a single person. via images.businessweek.com

Image via Wikipedia This is an excellent post from Building Industry Relationships that highlights another aspect of presenting value when courting clients. For service industries, value is the main offering that successful companies provide. Often the term is used in reference to perceived value, or “the relationship between the consumer’s perceived benefits in relation to the perceived costs of receiving these benefits.” In this case, Karen Davis discusses the more conventional meaning of value – saving money. At a time when people are pinching pennies, let them know how you your services can save them money in the long run. Their time is money. Their research effort is money. Their mistakes – money. Show your prospect the financial benefit of choosing you. – The financial benefit of choosing you over your competition, whether you’re in a job interview or trying to sign a contract. – The financial benefit spending a [Continue Reading...]

Wow. I wonder if there will ever be an iDefibrillator app… Brace yourselves for another Apple patent. It’s a weird and wacky one. It’s about using a “seamless” biometric heart rate monitor to identify iPhone users. Seriously. Your boom-tiddy-boom could unlock your iPhony-phone. Apple’s patent couldn’t be simpler: Part of the metal shell of an iPhone (can you say iPhone 2010, anyone?) is replaced by electronic sensors that detect the pulse of the user’s heart as it reaches the hand holding the phone. Peculiarities in each user’s heart patterns at the cardiac level, transmitted through their blood vessel network, result in a signature that the iPhone can then detect and use to identify particular persons. Thus logging in to your iPhone could become as easy as just picking the damn thing up and waiting a second or two (typically about the same time it would take to press unlock and [Continue Reading...]

This should be a lot of fun – ain’t nothin’ like some zydeco and crawdads… Pinch those tails, suck those heads and dance, dance, dance! At the ninth annual Gator By The Bay Festival (May 7-9) the Louisiana bayou comes to Spanish Landing Park in San Diego, bringing along 8000 pounds of crawfish (that’s where the tail pinching and head sucking comes in) and some of the hottest Cajun, zydeco, and blues music around. Dance fever at Gator By The Bay. Courtesy photo The festival is expected to draw more than 10,000 attendees, enjoying 70 performances on six stages, dance lessons, cooking demos, kid- and family-friendly activities, a plethora of food options including those succulent crawfish (a.k.a. mudbugs)and lots of dancing. For those unacquainted with the genre, Cajun music stems from the traditions of the descendants of French Acadians (Cajuns), who settled southwest Louisiana in the mid-1700s. Zydeco, the wilder, [Continue Reading...]

This is an excellent list of marketing techniques that every firm should be implementing. Start a blog (but make sure your are committed to regular, weekly posts. Get other lawyers in the firm or practice group to agree to contribute on a schedule); Make sure marketing and business goals are aligned (too often they are not in sync and send a confused message to the outside world); Find out what is written online about you and your firm by monitoring your reputation online (one way to do that is set up Google Alerts on yourself and firm’s name); Ask “why this is important” before issuing press releases (and make sure that “newsy” items are just that. If no one outside the firm would really care, it ain’t news); and Don’t forget the importance of face-to-face meetings (this should really be listed No. 1. IMHO it is much more valuable than [Continue Reading...]