The other day, I saw an informal poll on Linkedin that asked, “Are you looking at cloud initiatives for 2012?” 70% of the respondents said, “Yes.” Now, the poll wasn’t scientific, but I think that number indicates where the industry is heading.

I love basketball. March Madness is my time of year. As I watch the games I’m struck by not only the players’ athleticism, but their mastery of the game’s fundamentals. Without that mastery, no amount of athleticism will make a player great. All of us have to master the fundamentals of our profession whether shooting a free-throw, executing a pick-and-roll, setting a form, framing a roof or texturing a wall. Building Information Modeling (BIM) is no different. Before jumping into BIM with both feet, let’s work on some fundamentals.

Drawings have been used by designers for centuries to communicate ideas to the construction trades. Until recently, those drawings were produced by hand, but in the last 25 years or so, computers have become the primary tool people use to produce construction documents. Until just a couple of years ago, the computer-generated drawings were primarily two-dimensional representations of three-dimensional objects. BIM changes that and even more.

I'm once again pleased to introduce David DeVita as this week's author. David is a construction safety expert for Carolina Safety Consultants with over 20 years of experience.

I don’t know about you, but I really enjoy Christmas and the whole holiday season. Friends, family, food, taking it easy for a day or two…it all adds up to a great time of year. One thing I don’t necessarily care for though is gift shopping. This year I decided that fighting crowds wasn’t for me, so I did my shopping on-line while watching a basketball game. We’ve all shopped online – find the item; add it to my “cart”; provide the site with my credit card info, click the “purchase” button and wait for it to arrive on my doorstep. More than 75% of all Christmas shopping is done just like that. In the past few years, people have purchased billions of items over the internet from songs, books and apps to refrigerators, computers and cars. And they have no problem providing the online retailer with their personal credit information to complete the transaction.

By now, we’ve all heard that famously coined phrase, “There’s an App for that!” As mobile computing devices such as tablets and smartphones are becoming more and more a part of our lives, apps are too. But what exactly is an “app?” It’s shorthand for “application,” but do they really belong in the category of products we call software applications?