Category Archives: Planning & Design

Hyannis Kitchen Remodeling Expert Announces Tips to Help Consumers Select the Right Cabinets for Their Home Remodeling Project

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Barnstable, MA (PRWEB) July 01, 2012

Kitchen cabinets account for over half the cost of a remodeling project according to the National Kitchen and Bath Association. Making price driven decisions, can sometimes lead to shoddy cabinet selections. Kitchen cabinets are at eye-level and can consume a good portion of kitchen space, making them a valuable design feature in the kitchen, emphasizing the importance of selecting quality cabinets.

Quality is subjective, every homeowner has a different set of expectations they are looking for in kitchen cabinets. I know I like to get the best products money will buy, but I often have to settle with what I can afford. I still try to buy the best quality even when it will cost a little extra, it is worth it because of the longevity of the product, said Toby Leary, Owner of Toby Leary Fine Woodworking.

Consumer Reports conducted a survey regarding the quality of kitchen cabinets, stock cabinets versus custom cabinets and found, Readers we surveyed who bought the least expensive kitchen cabinets were likelier to have problems down the road. This supports the truth behind the clich

Chicago Porch Construction Expert Shares Advice on Adhering to Porch and Deck Inspection Codes

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Chicago, IL (PRWEB) July 01, 2012

In 2003, sweeping reforms were made by The City of Chicago to ensure the safety of balconies, porches and decks. The City began conducting extensive inspections. As a result, any deck or porch built before 2003 must meet specific codes or property owners will receive a citation from the City of Chicago, altering them they are in violation.

Homeowners, condo associations and management companies should be proactive before they receive a visit from the City Inspectors, said Frank Knight, owner of Mr. Porch. Mr. Porch has built over 400 porches in Chicago and the surrounding area and has never failed an inspection. Renters are finding their questionable decks and porches as a reason to withhold payment from property owners. Tenants are taking note of potential problems with their deck and porch, and notifying their landlord or property owner, said Frank. If no action is taken to make repairs, dwellers can call 311 to request an inspection by a building inspector.

What are inspectors looking for? Building inspectors perform porch and deck inspections, inspecting all elements of the porch including; the joists, beams, columns, stairs, hand and guard rails, ledger boards, connections and footings. All decks and porches must be able to support 100 pounds per square foot.

We perform two on-site inspections with the City of Chicago, one for footing and the second on-site inspection is for the final inspections. We expedite every drawing through the Citys Department of Construction and Permitting. We go to court for our customers for free, we can’t represent you, but we could testify that we have entered into a contract and we are moving forward to bring your building into compliance with the City of Chicago, said Frank.

Mr. Porch can provide architectural designs and plans. They also include a six month maintenance check and 2 year warranty on all porches.

We want to help homeowners get up to code, said Frank. To help, they are offering free inspections and free estimates. If you are not sure about your deck, you can call us up and can let you know if your porch is up to current code, free of charge, said Frank

To learn more about this company, please call their toll free number 877-677-6724 or visit their website http://www.mrporch.com

About Mr. Porch

Mr. Porch services include building and repairing wood porches and decks, steel porches, and fire escape restoration. The best and most affordable in the Chicago area, they offer free estimates, inspections, plans, permits, water sealant, a two-year warranty on all craftsmanship, and a six-month maintenance check-up. They serve the entire Chicago area and the surrounding communities.







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Factory Connect Integrates Fusion ioMemory to Increase Speed of Cloud-Based Software Suite

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SALT LAKE CITY (PRWEB) June 30, 2012

Factory Studios Inc. broke through barriers of big data production and transfer in the visual effects, animation and architectural design industries with the launch of Factory Connect, a cloud-based, on-demand six-piece animation software suite. Now, newly powered at the core by Fusion ioMemory memory and storage solutions, Factory Connect is even faster.

Adding Fusion ioMemory solutions to the core of Factory Connects groundbreaking platform further expedites every stepfrom conceptual inception to project completionof producing and transferring creative digital content. This increased speed further broadens work time between deadlines, and allows digital artists more time to elaborate on the creative possibilities of their projects.

Backing Factory Connects technologies with Fusion ioMemory unlocks the door to unparalleled production capabilities, said CTO of Factory Studios Inc., Tom Mikota. It develops an on-demand, turnkey solution for streaming cloud-based software to digital content creators across the globefrom large studios to individual artists.

Fusion ioMemory boosts Factory Studios Inc.s platform-as-a-service model of streaming software with unmatched power for data-intensive activities. The combination delivers unparalleled capabilities for rapid production and delivery, and looks to concrete itself as the standardized solution to big-data inefficiencies in the visual effects, gaming and animation industries.

With data delivery becoming an increasing challenge for productivity and creativity in digital content creation, Fusion-io is excited to be a part of Factory Studios unique and innovative cloud-based solution, said Vincent Brisebois, director of performance computing at Fusion-io. Incorporating flash-based ioMemory solutions, like the ioDrive2 and ioFX, with Factory Connect will provide users with the throughput and performance needed to unlock their creative potential and meet tight deadlines.

Pricing and Availability

Factory Connect is currently available with increased power at the core by Fusion ioMemory. Platform pricing is based on usage levels, making it cost effective for companies and/or projects of any size. To learn more about Factory Connect, go to http://www.factoryconnect.com/products

About Factory Studios Inc.

Factory Studios Inc. is a Salt Lake City-based technology company that provides a variety of services for the visual effects, gaming, animation, architecture, and engineering fields with its Factory Connect software. The software includes tools to stream big data, a meta-based file system, tools for digital workflow and enterprise management, a dynamic review system, and digital storefront. For more information about Factory Studios Inc., please visit http://www.factoryconnect.com/about.

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The Water Works Restaurant and Lounge In Philadelphia, PA Now Announces Patio Dining Facilities For Both Formal And Non Formal Gatherings

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Philadelphia, PA (PRWEB) June 29, 2012

Enjoy delicious business lunches in the Breezeway, or casual cocktails in the Caretakers Lounge at the Water Works Restaurant and Lounge. The superb setting, service, and dining found only at the Water Works Restaurant and Lounge will provide unmatched magic to special moments of every kind. The water works restaurant is a very reputed name in the whole of Philadelphia when it comes to hospitality. The place is frequently visited by celebrities like Sylvester Stallone and many more. Recently the place underwent renovation and after the process the place has now introduced patio dining facilities for both formal and non formal occasions.

A person can even create his or her own history at this Philadelphia Landmark Dining Experience with delectable world-class cuisine, first-class service, and unparalleled views. A person can simply make a reservation online or call 215.236.9000. All guests should note that outdoor seating with a view is based on availability and weather, and that their staff will make every effort to accommodate every guests unique requests, but they cannot guarantee specific seating.

About The Water Works Restaurant and Lounge:

In the early 1800s city leaders commissioned a talented, young engineer named Frederick Graff to design one of Philadelphiasand Americasfirst municipal water delivery systems. Meeting the challenge set before him with innovative engineering and architectural beauty, Graff originally employed steam engines to lift water to the reservoir high atop Faire Mountwhere the Philadelphia Museum of Art now stands. Over the years, the facility was adapted to house an aquarium and a public pool. During The Bicentennial in 1976, the Fairmount Water Works was honored as a National Historic Landmark.

Throughout the landmarks Golden Age the Fairmount Water Works was a point of great pride for Philadelphians. It was said that people havent truly experienced the city until they have visited this marvel. Its the mission of the Water Works Restaurant and Lounge to make that sentiment ring as true today as it did back then.







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BrightCarbon Launches New Website

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(PRWEB) June 29, 2012

BrightCarbon, a specialist presentation service agency, has launched a new website BrightCarbon.com.

Although the company has its own in-house design resources, it decided to work with a specialist web design company. Award-winning agency fffunction was chosen for the work.

Following an in-depth requirements and strategy workshop, fffunction created wire-frames to show how the site architecture and layout would work. They then created an extensive set of designs for different sections and content types. Following approval, the site was built using the popular WordPress platform, to work in all modern browsers. The back-end of the website has been created to allow BrightCarbon significant control over all aspects of the website from images and straplines, to articles and even the colophon.

Since the re-launch of the website, and the addition of new functionality including proactive chat for customer service, BrightCarbon has increased page views over 35%, average time on site by 45%, and has started to take orders from web-sourced traffic. Commenting, Joby Blume, Managing Consultant at BrightCarbon said we really wanted a design for our website that showed us in our best light. Were great at PowerPoint design, but thats a specialised skill, and so is website design. We needed to work with experts.

Weve had lots of compliments which is great, but even better weve started to actually make money from our website.

About BrightCarbon

BrightCarbon helps sales and marketing teams hit their numbers, by creating visual presentations and B2B sales tools.

BrightCarbon helps companies to tell their stories elegantly and visually, with effective sales presentations and tools that people want to use. With BrightCarbon:

aecKnowledge and The AIA California Council Announce Renewed Partnership

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San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) June 29, 2012

aecKnowledge, a leading provider of advanced online continuing education (CE) for architects, engineers and construction professionals, and The AIA California Council (AIACC) announce the renewal of their knowledge partnership. The partnership was formed in 2010 based on a shared mission to help design professionals advance their careers, enrich their firms and elevate their practices through knowledge sharing.

The AIACC is pleased to have renewed this partnership, stated Paul W. Welch, Jr., Hon. AIACC, Executive Vice President, AIACC. Joining forces with aecKnowledge will continue to allow the AIACC to deliver relevant, useful, and important knowledge to our members.

To date, AIACC and aecKnowledge have produced twenty-five online continuing education courses under this partnership, including a series on accessibility that addresses the California requirement for license renewal. The 2010/2011 series was viewed by more than 12,500 individuals including over 40% of Californias licensed architects, making it the most popular online venue for this content. The 2012/2013 series, which includes four courses totaling five hours, will be released in early August. A significant portion of course revenue goes to the AIACC and its 22 local components to fund other initiatives.

According to Michael Strogoff, FAIA, Founder & President, aecKnowledge, Our renewed partnership with the AIACC is a testament to the strong demand for online knowledge sharing. We are thrilled to have such a strong partner and to know that we are elevating the practice of architecture throughout California.

aecKnowledge’s online courses are approved for continuing education units by AIA/CES and/or GBCI. The courses are also accepted by many states to fulfill mandatory CE requirements for ongoing licensure. Additional materials, including free course previews, written transcripts, course descriptions, learning objectives and presenter biographies are also available.

About aecKnowledge

aecKnowledge, based in the San Francisco Bay Area, is an established web-based, peer-reviewed knowledge sharing platform for the AEC industries. aecKnowledge enables members of the architecture, engineering, construction and land use planning industries to share unbiased knowledge and to leverage their collective intellectual capital. With a mission to transform how design and construction professionals throughout the AEC industries collaborate with and learn from each other, aecKnowledge targets the more than 6 million professionals and tradespeople across the fragmented AEC industry, and provides a venue for allied professionals and knowledge providers to strengthen their presence among a large and engaged audience. Visit http://www.aecKnowledge.com for more information.

About The AIA California Council

The AIACC represents the interests of more than 11,000 architects and allied professionals in California. Founded in 1944, The AIACC’s mission supports architects in their endeavors to improve the quality of life for all Californians by creating more livable communities, sustainable designs and quality work environments. Today, The AIACC is the largest component of the national AIA organization. For more information, visit http://www.aiacc.org.







DNS Made Easy Introduces ANAME Records

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Reston, VA (PRWEB) June 28, 2012

DNS Made Easy, the industry’s leading IP Anycast DNS provider, announced the release of ANAME records. ANAME records are exclusive to DNS Made Easy and are useful as an alternative to CNAME records. This industry leading technology is another step that shows why more clients make DNS Made Easy their preferred choice to over-priced and underperforming alternatives in the enterprise IP Anycast market.

CNAME records, or alias records, are used by DNS administrators to easily map names within their domain to other fully qualified domain names. The advantage of the CNAME record is that no knowledge of the IP address(es) associated with the target fully qualified domain name is required.

“Unfortunately the capabilities of CNAMEs did not come without sacrifice,” explained David Miller, CTO of DNS Made Easy. “CNAME records cannot legally be created for the apex or root record of a domain. CNAME records must be unique; as such, users are not able to create additional records of different types (i.e. TXT, MX, etc.) at the same name. The uniqueness requirement also prevents the use of CNAME records in a round robin configuration. Finally, CNAME records can cause slower DNS resolution since they generally require at least a double DNS lookup. DNS Made Easy is committed to raising the bar in the industry as a whole, and we knew there had to be a better way. As a result, we designed one.”

With DNS Made Easys ANAME Record type, clients of DNS Made Easy can now realize the same ease of use of CNAME records without all the limitations and decrease in performance.

When an ANAME record is created, DNS Made Easy will synthesize all A records required for the name within the domain from the current values of the target of the ANAME record. DNS Made Easy will then continuously monitor the A records associated with the ANAMEs target fully qualified domain name. Whenever the IP address(es) of an ANAME target change, DNS Made Easy will instantly update the necessary A Records using their proprietary Peregrine Instant DNS update technology.

ANAME records can be used at the apex or root record for a domain. Because the resulting DNS records are A records, there is no longer a limitation on allowing an alias at the root record.

ANAME records provide ability to load balance CNAME records. If the user creates multiple ANAME records with the same name, the IP addresses of the targets will all be added in a round robin configuration in DNS Made Easy. If the alias side of the record maps to multiple IPs itself, DNS Made Easy will recognize this and will immediately update and create the IP mappings.

ANAME records also solve the performance problem with CNAME records. The correct IP is returned on the first lookup, rather than requiring additional lookups by resolving name servers. Faster DNS lookups make websites load faster and improve SEO.

ANAME records are fully compatible with and extend the functionality of the Global Traffic Director service from DNS Made Easy. An ANAME record created with a GTD region will cause queries for the targets value to be made only from hosts that are located within that particular region, this ensures that only regional values will be used for regional records and that traffic will continue to be directed geographically.

Most CDNs require CNAME records within customer domains to utilize the CDN service. Replacing these CNAME records with ANAME records can provide an extremely flexible and powerful solution to keep optimize the use of CDN services. The combination of ANAME records and GTD service removes the multiple DNS lookups of a CNAME and will provide regionally relevant values. This provides the complete power and flexibility that enterprise companies require from their networks today.

DNS Made Easy claims that other products similar to the ANAME record are available from other providers. These other products are limited in only being available at the apex of a domain, or can target records only provided by a particular hosting service, or do not offer geographically specific differentiation of values. DNS Made Easy believes that they are the only solution that allows clients to create an ANAME record for any name within a domain which targets any fully qualified domain name and combines this with the ability to serve geographically specific records.

“DNS Made Easy has provided our new ANAME Record functionality to all of our customers at no additional cost. We are excited to be the first and only DNS provider in the industry to provide such a unique and complete service,” stated David Miller. “All of this is done over our industry leading IP Anycast+ network, the worlds fastest and most redundant DNS network in the world. AAAANAME records are in testing and will be released to all of our customers shortly to provide the same functionality for IPv6 addresses.”

More information about DNS Made Easy suite of services is available at http://www.dnsmadeeasy.com

More information about ANAME records is available at http://www.anamerecord.com

About DNS Made Easy

DNS Made Easy is a subsidiary of Tiggee LLC and is a leader in providing global IP anycast enterprise DNS services. DNS Made Easy implemented the industry’s first triple independent anycast cloud architecture for maximum DNS speed and DNS redundancy. DNS Made Easy originally launched their DNS services and web management portal in 2002 and has grown to manage hundreds of thousands of customer domains receiving more than 5.0 billion queries per day. DNS Made Easy has a proud history of industry leading uptime and ROI since launching their DNS service. DNS Made Easy has been the preferred choice for most brands on the Internet compared to the over-priced and under-performing enterprise IP anycast alternatives.

About Tiggee LLC

Tiggee LLC (tiggee.com) is a privately held company, formed in 1999 to provide innovative internet solutions for businesses. “Putting your business on the Internet is our business.” Tiggee LLCs subsidiaries include DNS Made Easy (IP anycast enterprise managed DNS services dnsmadeeasy.com), VPSit (enterprise virtualization environments vpsit.com), Host Made Easy (dedicated server hosting and co-location services hostmadeeasy.com), Top Level DNS (TLD name services topleveldns.com), Resolving Name Server (resolvingnameserver.com), Show My Host (showmyhost.com), Reverse DNS Trace (reversednstrace.com), IPv6 Verify (ipv6verify.com), and Domains Made Easy (domainsmadeeasy.com).







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Chiang Mai, Thailand Architect Tropo Design Creates Fibonacci-Inspired Energy Efficient Custom Home

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Chiang Mai, Thailand (PRWEB) June 27, 2012

Chiang Mai architect Robert Hupertz of tropo-design, at the request of a client, is currently designing a house using the Fibonacci spiral and the ratio of the golden rectangle. This spiral is pleasing to the eye and found in nature, art and architecture. Everyday examples of the geometric wonder are seashells, roses, and sunflowers to name a few.

This new home will be built in Lamphun Province of Thailand, 20 km from Chiang Mai. The building is situated in Lanna Airpark, to the north of the privately owned Lanna airport.

Architect Robert Hupertz described the design challenge:

“It is so exciting to work for demanding customers! In this case our client is an engineer and flight instructor who has been fascinated by mathematics and the Fibonacci sequence (Fibonacci-spiral) in particular, since he was young.”

This project will be very elegant when completed The design of the main staircase starts at the middle of the Fibonacci spiral, and room sizes, heights, and openings are based on the ratio of the golden rectangle. Other elements of the design such as orientation, roof overhangs and protruding walls are defined by the track of the sun during the day to provide shade throughout the year.

The shape and slope of the roof was chosen to increase natural ventilation, provide shade and give protection from the rain.

This custom home will not need air-conditioning to maintain comfortable indoor temperatures. Instead, the house will be cooled by using thick, aerated concrete blocks for all walls which are exposed to the sun. West facing walls will have an additional ventilated skin to reduce heat transfer in the afternoon. Ventilated metal sheets with thermal insulation reduce the heat gain through the roof.

Additionally, to keep the inside cool, the entire structure will have concrete for structural floors, beams, and columns. All windows are shaded from direct sun and located so as to increase the natural flow of air in the house. These passive measures will save the owner thousands of dollars overall in cooling costs.

Swiss architect Robert Hupertz has been working in Thailand for 16 years and understands the climate and culture. His green architecture firm in Chiang Mai practices sustainable and climate responsive design. His goal is to design poetic buildings while conserving energy resources and reducing long term costs. He does commercial architecture in addition to residential architecture in Chiang Mai and surrounding areas.

Robert and his client are looking forward to seeing the completion of this Fibonacci inspired home that will not only be beautiful, but impressively energy efficient.

About tropo-design

tropo-design is a custom architectural firm based in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Owner Robert Hupertz and his team create modern, cost effective buildings for the tropics.

tropo-design, Architects, Engineers

4/9 Soi 3, Loi Kroh Rd.

Chiang Mai 50100

Thailand

+66 53 449 667 (Telephone/Fax)

+66 81 993 90 67 (Mobile)

contact(at)tropo-design(dot)com

This press release was prepared by Bobrow Consulting Group (BCG) for tropo-design. BCG works with building design professionals to build their business by optimizing their online strategy, teaching marketing for architecture firms as well as offering web design and SEO consulting services.







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C.A.R Good Neighbor Awards Give RE/MAX Agent Hasani Steele Five Reasons to Celebrate Success

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Chicago, IL (PRWEB) June 27, 2012

Hasani Steele, a top-producing Chicago real estate agent with RE/MAX Premier Properties, 1205 N. Dearborn Pkwy., in the city’s Gold Coast neighborhood, had to have been happy with the recently announced results of the Chicago Association of Realtors