Home Builder Developer - Interior Renovation and Design

Johnny Depp, who will appear in Glastonburys epic new cinema area. Photograph: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

The finishing touches are being put to the Glastonbury lineup ahead of the festival opening on 21 June, with Hollywood A-lister Johnny Depp and former Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher confirmed to appear.

Depp will be the guest of honour at the Cineramageddon stage, which is a new addition for the festival this year. He will introduce his 2004 film The Libertine, a period romp which flopped on its cinema release, in which he stars as hedonistic 17th-century poet John Wilmot. This is one of those films that got lost in the shuffle, Depp said in a statement. Its a film on which a lot of people worked very hard, and one that I am very proud of.

Depp has also curated the other films screening that evening. The first is comic odyssey Withnail and I, of which he says: No film has ever made me laugh more, or filled me with so much joy and dread! For me, this is perfect cinema. Genius. The second is Jim Jarmuschs eerie western Dead Man, which Depp also stars in and which he describes as an epic visual poem. Its unlike anything else.

Glastonbury founder Michael Eavis recently described the Cineramageddon stage in an interview: Weve got a massive film screen and 100 60s American and Cuban cars. Weve put them all in straight lines, so you can sit in the cars, watch the films and the sound comes into the cars by a little Bluetooth thingy on the wing mirror. Julien Temple is doing all the film choices. This is the biggest thing of the year.

Liam Gallagher, meanwhile, will perform on the Other stage on Saturday at 5.45pm. Its the latest in a series of gigs as he launches his debut solo album, led by current single Wall of Glass.

Those hopeful of an Oasis reunion at Glastonbury will note that Liams brother and Oasis bandmate Noel is also appearing at the festival, introducing a screening of the documentary Supersonic. But the Gallagher brothers ongoing public beef escalated last week after Liam called Noel a sad fuck for not appearing at the One Love Manchester benefit concert organised for the victims of the Manchester Arena terror attack. Liam had appeared, performing a number of songs including a duet of Live Forever with Coldplays Chris Martin.

Another last-minute Glastonbury addition is Nasa astronaut Mike Massimino, who flew on two missions to help repair the Hubble telescope. He appears at the Free University of Glastonbury at 2pm on Friday.

Read this article:
Johnny Depp and Liam Gallagher among Glastonbury lineup additions - The Guardian

New York Times

Olympics Adds 3-on-3 Basketball and Mixed Gender Relays - The ... New York Times Steven Gardiner passed the baton to Shaunae Miller-Uibo of the Bahamas during the mixed 4x400-meter relay at the World Relays competition this year. and more »

See original here:
Olympics Adds 3-on-3 Basketball and Mixed Gender Relays - The ... - New York Times

Microsoft and Turn 10 studios have officially pulled the wraps off of Forza Motorsport 7, the first Forza designed to run on Xbox One X, Microsofts next-generation console. Last month, I went to Turn 10s offices to see Forza ahead of its E3 debut. I spent a little under 30 minutes playing the game, and the rest of the trip speaking with the team that brought it to life.

A half hour isnt enough time to provide a deep dive, but heres what I can say. Its the most beautiful Forza Motorsport ever. While its playable on Xbox One and will also be released on PC, it was really built for and alongside the development of what was then still called Project Scorpio, which means it will run natively at 60 frames per second at 4K resolution.

The cars look lifelike in most lighting, the tracks look good enough to walk around, and the skies in the demo were so picturesque I occasionally had a hard time watching the road. Speaking as someone who has an old 1080p screen on his wall, this is the kind of game that will make people like me think: maybe this is the year I buy a better TV.

700 cars, dynamic weather, and now: characters

Theres also more of, well, everything. Turn 10 is offering 700 cars at launch, nearly lapping the 450 from Forza Motorsport 6 and that includes the return of Porsche. There are 30 tracks (or locations) with more than 200 different configurations for players to run. The weather and night modes that were added in Forza 6 are no longer just modes: theres a fully dynamic weather system that changes with every race, sometimes even during the race. You can see the horizon shimmer in the distance on hot tracks. The puddles now change in real time when it pours, and on some tracks you can see the rain approaching off in the distance.

Forza 7 primarily leverages the new consoles power in order to emphasize realism. Wires, tubes, and the mirrors inside the cockpits of the race cars rattle in response to the bumps on the tarmac. Window netting ripples in the periphery as the wind whips by at 100 miles per hour. Even the windshield wipers shake as you barrel around a course.

While Turn 10 hasnt radically redefined the racing game, Forza 7 looks, at first glance, like a considerable visual upgrade compared to its last two predecessors. But it wont be the only racing game to run at 4K and 60p for long. So instead, the studio has been working on an entirely new challenge: making its car game more human.

An exclusive first look at 5 minutes of Forza Motorsport 7 gameplay.

A bell rings.

Im at Turn 10s headquarters, which is tucked into a business park hugged by trees about a drag race away from Microsofts home base in Redmond, Washington. And when I ask what the bells for, nobody's quite sure. The teams so burdened by E3 prep that theyve forgotten their Pavlovian responses.

Weve been basically living here, so if you smell some smells forgive us, Dan Greenawalt, Forzas creative director and a founder of Turn 10, tells me when I walk through the door. There are 18 days until Greenawalt will hop on stage at E3 to show off what the studio has spent the last two years working on. As if thats not enough weight on their shoulders, Forza Motorsport 7 is a Scorpio launch title, so it will serve as an early standard bearer for the console.

Eventually I learn the bell was for some newly-met goal, but nobody takes a moment to really celebrate. Theyre too giddy talking about the game. Spirits are up in Redmond. The team seems surprisingly rested, composed, and focused. Thats because Turn 10 is in the most enviable position for a game developer: Forza 7 is ahead of schedule.

Forza Motorsport 7 is farther ahead than usual

Not only has the game been running on Scorpio dev kits for a while now, its been running really well. At one point, I tried basically the same tech demo the folks at Digital Foundry wrote about, where the full field of cars was locked to a grid like a roller coaster, putting more of them in view than youd typically see during a race. This is one way the software team tests the games limits, and yet it was only pushing about 80 percent of the GPU and about 70 percent of the CPU.

Thats impressive for a game thats months away from release. Of the time I spent playing and watching other parts of Forza 7, the only truly unfinished bits visible to me were some of the menu graphics.

Forza 7 wouldnt be this far along if it wasnt for the partnership Turn 10 started a few years ago with UK-based Playground Studios, which makes the more arcade-style Forza Horizon series using the same Forza Tech game engine that Motorsport is built on. By staggering the release of Horizon in the years where there is no Motorsport, the teams are able to share knowledge and accelerate the pace of development.

Chris Tector, the teams software architect, calls that decision a turning point for the franchise. We can actually share those features back and forth between the titles, and it means both of them can become better with each release, more than they would if they were being developed in isolation, Tector says.

Its this approach that carved out room to add features like dynamic weather and an entirely new character component, Greenawalt explains, while also dramatically increasing the number of cars and tracks all as the team preps the game engine to run in 4K.

You go, hey, I've got this great team that can build anything. Let's not have them build everything, says Greenawalt. It allows that big team, instead of trying to just boil the ocean and do everything, they focus all that innovation in one place and can go in incredible areas.

The other big piece to getting Forza 7 ahead of schedule, though, is that Turn 10 has been developing the new game alongside Project Scorpio since the beginning. For a while, Turn 10 used simulations of the Scorpio hardware. Eventually, though, it came time to fire up the game on the real thing.

I was coming back from lunch and [Tector] came over, and he was vibrating, says Alan Hartman, the studio head for Turn 10. He was like, we're running on Scorpio, you want to see it? Hartman followed him over to a conference room that had its windows blacked out. I come in and I see the fan pointed at the circuit board and the ribbon cables strung out and brought around to the monitor. And sure enough, there we are, running.

Running smoothly, even. Typically, Hartman says, you get it working, and it's running at 10 frames a second, and you go okay, now I have to work weekends to get it working fast. It's super advantageous, because we get to focus on the game, not trying to build the tech layer.

We talk a lot about finding the fun, Greenawalt adds. You do all this work so that you're starting from a pretty fun place, but let's be honest it's a hypothetical fun place until you get [the game] in your hands. And when youre fighting the technology, just to get it to run, getting it stable, you can't find that fun, because it's all coming together at the last second.

Scorpio has already been touted for its head-spinning specs ahead of the official reveal. It cranks 6 teraflops of power, has 12GB of GDDR5 RAM, and a custom GPU that runs at 1172MHz. All which means its set to be the most powerful home console on the market.

That power is great for the looks and performance. But Turn 10's true focus in Forza Motorsport 7 is on something that raw power can't guarantee, something that will be a part of Forza going forward no matter which version you play.

While many of the people at Turn 10 appear well-rested, the mottled hair and the bags under Scott Lees eyes are a sign some have definitely lost some sleep over Forza 7. As the lead art director, Lees been shepherding one of the games most defining features: the addition of customizable characters.

Characters are a new and prominent part of the game experience

Lees small character team has funneled a ton of effort into creating absurd levels of detail for the now more prominent driver, by building out a catalog of racing suits, helmets, gloves, and more. The game has over 300 character designs, and about a week or more of work went into each. There are female and male models, and different silhouettes, or body types, for both, each of which took around five weeks to design.

Whats more, each one of the five discrete pieces that makes up a character (the helmet, the suit, etc.) has its own 4K asset. Zoom in on a helmet and youll see realistic scuffs and smudges on the visor and on some special helmets, signatures that look like they were just Sharpie-d on.

That might sound like a strange amount of attention spent on something you wont see much of while youre racing. But for a good chunk of Forza Motorsport 7, you actually will see your driver. Turn 10 has completely revamped its menu system to put an emphasis on showing off these characters. For example, the pre-race screen that shows up before you start a multiplayer race is now fashioned more like a loadout screen in a shooting game. There are menu options on the left, and your character stands swaying on the right, as if shes itching to hop in and drive.

Characters will also show up at the ends of races, podium-style, with the winner front and center looking proud, and the third-place finisher turned slightly away from the camera as if theyre already plotting revenge. Your characters look will even now represent you when you show up in friends games as drivatars, a feature introduced back in Forza 5.

Expect real race suits, old-timey outfits, and lots of inside jokes

Players will be able to choose between everything from real race suits with HANS devices, to old-timey outfits with leather helmets, to some even goofier additions from pop culture. (Expect a lot of era-specific inside jokes, Lee laughs. There's a lot of middle-aged people that work here.) With Forza featuring real racing series like IndyCar and NASCAR, you can also expect to see some more iconic suits as well, set to be announced later this summer.

While diehard fans are always going to want more cars and tracks, the game has long passed the point where it lacked in either of those departments. One thing it has been missing, though, is a way for players to represent themselves beyond the badge on a cars hood. Bringing characters front and center seems to be a reaction to that critique, a step towards making players care more about what, and how, they do in the game.

I think [the characters] might be the coolest opportunity for us to really kind of depart from Forzas in the past, Lee says, though he admits it wont be as deep as the character creation tools in other sports games. And it isnt as focused on story as something like Maddens new Longshot mode. But he thinks its a good foundation on which to build. I think it's really kind of a nod to where we want to go with the franchise, Lee explains. I feel like the car becomes a lot more personal, it's oh it belongs to somebody, it's something.

Looks are a huge part of Forza, but you dont play racing games on mute. Sound is crucial to an immersive experience, and so even Chase Combs, the games audio director, has spent the last two years trying to find ways to make Forza 7 grab the attention of your ears as much as your eyes. That starts with abandoning the sweeping cinematic score of Forza 6 in favor of a soundtrack you might mistake for whats found in modern-day beer commercials.

We ended up kind of going with something that felt a little more rooted in what you might hear in a garage, you know? That automotive spirit, Combs says.

But Combs and his team went further than just shifting genres. The music in the game (which you can customize with your own songs if youre not big fan of power chords) follows you as you hop around the different environments. It also dynamically adapts to those environments.

Go from the main menus to the garage to start tuning one of your cars, and suddenly the music sounds like its coming from a radio on the other side of the room. Hop into Forzavista mode, get in the car, and it will muffle. Jump over to the car selection menu, where your character is standing on a stage, and the music sounds like its coming through stadium speakers.

This follows through to the races, too. As you drive around each course, the games soundtrack will flash by you as you pass the tracks speakers.

A goal of mine, Combs says, was to make [the music] a character in the game, not just something that we lay on top of the game and people kind of turn off. I wanted to make it feel like it was actually seated in the environment.

The music actually sounds like its playing in a garage, or coming from the track speakers

Its a slick effect, but music is less than half the battle when it comes to the sound of a racing game. The cars need to sound as real as they look, too.

We think audio is critical component of that sense of speed and the kind of violent or exciting nature of racing. At times it's complete cacophony, tons of noise, rocks hitting the underbody of the car, he says. With race cars in particular, you have no noise insulation, and so it's just like this like giant resonating metal box.

To get all that right, Turn 10 struck up a partnership with Warner Brothers, which got them access to some of the more rare cars that appear in the game. We could come to them with a list of cars, and they could just go off and do all that, Combs says. Getting an actual race transmission has always been a challenge for us and we think that's a critical component of what a race car sounds like.

The end result is a game that sounds remarkably lifelike without all the different layers the screaming engines, squealing tires, doors slamming, and the rock soundtrack muddying each other up. You can hear the air being sucked into the engine at the same time that, say, your tires hit the gravel when you slip off the curbing of a track. Theres enough space in the mix for the click-thud of shifting gears, the raindrops hitting the windshield, and the spray coming off the tires to play together, not against each other.

Of course, Combs shows me all this in one of his small sound editing studios. So what about the rest of us schmucks playing through the tiny, drilled speaker holes on our flatscreens?

Thats a question Combs thinks a lot about, he says, especially when it comes to car crashes. There is an initial instinct when you're making collision sounds to try to just, like I'm gonna juice the bass. But we know that with those speakers, anything below 200 hertz or more, [they] just can't reproduce it, he says.

Combs has a switch on his desk that he can flip to funnel the sound through two desktop speakers, and that his team will often head out to one of the common areas and use the TVs there. That way, hopefully, their work can be heard no matter where you play. Good audio doesnt sell games, but Turn 10 hopes it will be just as engaging as the new characters, and as exciting as the cars themselves.

Adding customizable characters and doing tricky things with the sound might seem ancillary to the core Forza experience. But with Scorpio letting the team max out the graphics and the racing engine, these are the ways Turn 10 is trying to grow its customer base beyond the 4 million players it already claims.

How do you do that? Well, for one thing, this will be the first full Forza title available on PC. There, the company hopes to court the same increasingly diverse sets of players (namely: women and kids, but also competitors in the Forza Championship series) that it says has come to the game on Xbox in recent years. One way of doing that will be through sheer compatibility Turn 10 says it has tested everything from PlayStation DualShocks to pro racing wheels to Guitar Hero controllers, and all of them work with Forza 7 on PC.

And yes, Forza is more approachable these days. Its tempting to think of Horizon as the game for non-racers, and Motorsport for the diehards. But the number of driver assists and the freeing up of the campaign has made Motorsport almost as accessible to new players. There will be more of that in Forza Motorsport 7. One particular new option is a friction assist, which lets the player turn up or down how severely theyll be affected by driving off track.

Realism and punishing dont have to go together

For some players, if you've got licensed cars, and you've got realistic graphics, you are as realistic as is required, Greenawalt says. We keep pushing the physics system further and further and further, and I think it's understandable that people would go wow, if you do that then you've made it inaccessible. That's not been the case. Or, as Hartman puts it, realism and punishing don't have to go together.

In that way, Turn 10 is redefining realism. Or at the very least, widening the focus of the definition to include the more human aspects of being a racer: the way your body jostles in the seat, the sound and fury that comes with pushing a car to its limits, the silly stickers that can be plastered over a helmet. Forza Motorsport 7 is all about creating the feeling that youre a great driver whether or not the computers helping.

Thats why Greenawalt thinks pushing for unpolished realism through things like scuffed helmets and garage-speaker sound is so important. Turn 10 has already mastered making glossy racing games. To grow, it has to stop buffing out the dings that make things feel familiar and real. What makes cars more relatable is the human hands that made them, and yes, those create imperfections, he says. But it's the imperfections that really bring it to life.

Edited by Chris Plante and Casey Newton.

View post:
Forza Motorsport 7 first look: the series refocuses on its drivers - The Verge

We are very pleased to receive the 2016 Super Service Award. Angies List is a well-respected organization and their stamp of approval carries a lot of weight with consumers.

San Diego, CA (PRWEB) June 12, 2017

BM Windows, an independent replacement window and door company in San Diego, California, recently announced that their company is a recipient of the 2016 Angies List Super Service Award. The awards are given out annually by Angies List, a website dedicated to providing consumers with authentic reviews on home improvement companies.

As a recipient of the award, BM Windows will have an exclusive green badge on their Angies List profile indicating that they are a 2016 Super Service Award winner. They also are given Super Service Award stickers to place on their company vehicles and in their San Diego showroom.

Angies List Super Service Award winners must meet the following criteria set forth by Angies List. The service provider must:

Michal Bohm, owner of BM Windows in San Diego, had this to say about receiving the award: We are very pleased to receive the 2016 Super Service Award. Angies List is a well-respected organization and their stamp of approval carries a lot of weight with consumers. They do a good job of keeping fraudulent reviews from their site, making them a credible source for real, unbiased customer reviews.

Bohm continued, As a company, we work hard to provide every homeowner with excellent customer service. Its been our main focus since we opened the doors of our replacement window company. We do it because its the right thing to do. Receiving positive reviews and winning customer service awards like this one are just icing on the cake!

Businesses cannot pay to become Angies List Super Service Award winners. The award is given out largely based on verified customer reviews and ratings, and is a higher level of distinction than the Angies List Certified Provider designation, which is a distinction reserved for paid advertisers on Angies List who must only maintain an overall B rating on the site to qualify.

About BM Windows

BM Windows is a San Diego replacement window and patio door company specializing in vinyl retrofit products that perform well in coastal climates. The company was established with an unwavering commitment to customer satisfaction and follows a simple philosophydeliver high-quality products and service at affordable prices, without the hassle of high-pressure sales presentations.

BM Windows has completed thousands of replacement window and door installations throughout San Diego County and was recently named one of the Fastest Growing Dealers by Door & Window Market Magazine. BM Windows was also named Dealer of the Year by Window & Door Magazine for excellence in customer service. Learn more about BM Windows at https://www.bmwindowsca.com/.

Share article on social media or email:

Read the original post:
BM Windows in San Diego Wins Angie's List Super Service Award - PR Web (press release)

You can suss out a lot about Apples priorities from the aspects of a product it leaves alone and the ones it never stops obsessing over.

Consider the iPad. Every generation of Apples tablet since the first one in 2010 has had the same stated battery lifeup to 10 hourswhich suggests that the company thinks that shooting for anything in excess of that would be wasted effort.

That 2010 iPad weighed a pound and a half, and felt a bit hefty in the hand. With 2013s iPad Air, Apple whittled that down to about a pound. And there the mid-sized iPads have stayed, weight-reduction mission accomplished.

However, when it comes to the iPads display, Apple has never been satisfied to rest on its technological laurels. Thats more apparent than ever with the new 10.5-inch iPad Proand its updated 12.9-inch counterpartwhich the company unveiled last week at the WWDC conference in San Jose. An awfully high percentage of their defining characteristics remain unchanged: Apple hasnt futzed with the existing iPad industrial design, transferred over iPhone features such as 3D Touch or a two-lens camera, or decided that iPads dont need headphone jacks.

Instead, nearly everything thats new about the new iPad Pro aims to make the experience of interacting with its screen better. That starts with the fact that the 10.5-inch screen is almost 20%larger than the classic 9.7-inch one as seen on last years model. Its also brighter (allowing for support of HDR video) and less reflective. And a technology called ProMotion can refresh the screen at 120Hz120 frames a second, double the previous rateso games and videos are as smooth as possible, but can also step that rate down to conserve power when showing something like a still photo. Even the new processor, the A10X Fusion, is interesting primarily because it allows for more graphical splendor and faster, more fluid interaction with the screen, even in apps that push the tablets capabilities to their limits.

For the last few days, Ive been testing a unit of the 10.5-inch iPad Pro provided for review by Apple. Even though its not a great leap forward from its iPad Pro predecessors, its a terrific, remarkably refined tablet. But its also an intriguing statement about where Apple thinks the iPad is headedespecially once iOS 11, which is rife with iPad-specific features, arrives. (The operating-system upgrade should ship this fall.) The new iPad Pros technological upgrades, focused as they are on showing off ambitious apps to their best advantage, come off as Apple responding to the iPad lines ongoing sales slump by giving developers the opportunity to build new experiences that will make the tablet compelling all over again.

Apple has released three new iPads this year, and choosing between them shouldnt leave anyone agonizing for too long. If youre spending carefully and mostly plan to consume stuff such as movies, games, e-books, and the web, the logical choice is the standard 9.7-inch iPad, which starts at $329. The 10.5-inch iPad Pros starting price of $649 is nearly twice as much, but gets you a much more versatile and powerful device, with a bigger and better display, faster performance, compatibility with the Apple Pencil stylus, and the ability to turn the tablet into a mini-laptop by connecting its magnetic Smart Connector to a keyboard from Apple or Logitech. The updated 12.9-inch iPad Pro, starting at $799, offers everything the 10.5-inch model does, in a much more expansive form aimed at people (like me!) who want to use an iPad all day long for tasks that less adventuresome types would perform on a Windows PC or Mac.

(The iPad lines outlier is the aging iPad Mininow available in a single storage size of 128 GB for $399 and the subject of ugly rumors that it isnt long for this world, possibly done in by the popularity of big-screen phones such as Apples own iPhone 7 Plus.)

When Apple has introduced new iPad screen sizes in the past, theyve redefined what the iPad was. 2012s iPad Mini made Apples tablet much more appealing to people who wanted something more akin to a totable digital paperback than the bigger, heavier, full-sized iPad. Conversely, the spacious 12.9-inch screen on 2015s original iPad Pro made the tablet a plausible laptop replacement for power users in ways that previous models had not been.

The new screen size of 10.5 inches, by contrast, is not transformative. Its just a big plus to have meaningfully more real estateand a higher resolution of 2224-by-1668 pixelsin nearly the same form factor as last years 9.7-inch iPad Pro. The most visible step Apple took to pull off that feat was to reduce the left- and right-hand sides of the bezel (in portrait orientation). But the company also performed a less obvious shrinkage of the top and bottom borders, and made the entire tablet longer, creating room for a slightly taller display. When you rotate the iPad into landscape mode, that extra height becomes extra width. And the extra width helps make the 10.5-inch iPad Pro feel more productive, as a computing device with Pro in its name should.

For starters, it makes for a wider, comfier on-screen keyboard, which Apple bills as a full-size keyboard. Its still smaller than all but the tiniest laptop keyboards, but easier to type on than the 9.7-inch one. The same goes for the new full-size version of Apples pricey $159 Smart Keyboard. (I hope that its build quality is more robust than that of earlier Smart Keyboards, whose fabric key tops, in my experience as an ardent iPad typist, start to show wear within weeks; Microsofts Type Cover for its Surface easily remains the worlds finest tablet keyboard.)

Just in general, the bigger screen makes spending extended time with something like a word processor more pleasant, especially if you use the split-view mode to plop another app alongside it as you work. The much larger 12.9-inch iPad Pro is still the more logical laptop replacement, but for a compact tablet that still weighs in at just over a pound, the 10.5-inch iPad Pro is surprisingly well-suited to serious work. It should be a great machine for airplane seat-back trays.

The other screen improvementsincreased brightness and refresh rate, and the benefits they offercontinue the momentum of previous iPad Pros, which similarly aimed to dazzle with new display technologies. The original 2015 12.9-inch model, for instance, introduced something called variable refresh rate that, in retrospect, seems to have been a rough draft of the new models ProMotion, which also adjusts the refresh rate on the fly. Last years 9.7-inch model upped the brightness, widened the color gamut for more saturated colors, and added True Tone, a feature that sensed ambient lighting and adjusted colors for consistency.

What Im trying to say is that the advent of the new iPad Pros isnt like the introduction of the new iPad back in 2012, when the tablet gained a retina-resolution screen for the first time and the previous years iPad 2 suddenly looked like a jaggy antique. Instead, a device with a spectacular display has been supplanted by one that looks slightly more spectacular. (The contrast between the new iPad Pro and the original 12.9-inch model from 2015 is more significant than with the 9.7-incher.) Some of the things that are new about the new iPad Pro display will pay off once app makers have caught up: Its ability to display HDR video, for instance, will be a boon once companies such as Netflix and Amazon begin streaming HDR movies to iPads.

Already, among the beneficiaries of ProMotions 120Hz refresh rate is Apples Pencil styluswhich, it turns out, was being held back by previous iPad Pros. When I squiggled virtual ink onto the page in the Procreate app as fast as I could, the 10.5-inch iPad Pro kept up noticeably better than last years 9.7-inch model, creating a drawing experience that felt a little less digital and a little more real.

Like I said, Apple is obsessive about this stuff.

As for the new A10X processorwhich Apple says is up to 30% faster and up to 40% faster for graphicsits promise is mostly about letting developers ratchet up the ambition of their creations. You can see why Apple gave WWDC keynote time to Affinity Photo, a hyper-ambitious photo editor that has more of the kitchen-sink capability of full-blown Photoshop than the Photoshop apps that are available for the iPad. The A10x chips performance gains are apparent in areas such as the thumbnail previews of filter effects, which gradually pop into place on last years iPad Pro and are just there on the new model. This is the sort of app that benefits from as much computational horsepower as it can getand the more apps there are like it, the better the case for the iPad Pro as a PC-rivaling creativity machine.

Serifs Affinity Photo brings desktop-like image-processing power to the iPad. [Photo: courtesy of Serif Labs]Among the software that will leverage the A10Xs muscle is iOS 11 itself. When that update comes along, these new iPad Pro models will be capable of putting up to four apps on-screen at once: two in split view, a third in slide-over mode, and, if thats not enough to occupy your attention, the video from a fourth app as a pop-over window. Previous iPads may be plenty speedy for garden-variety tasks, but they wont be able to pull of that feat.

Along with the screen and processor improvements, Apple also upgraded both new iPad Pros cameras. Theyve got the same ones as the iPhone 7: a 12-megapixel model with a four-LED flash on the backside, and a seven-megapixel one on the front for FaceTime calls, selfies, and the like. The photos I shot indeed turned out just as crisp, colorful, and generally pleasing as if Id taken them with an iPhone 7; that probably wont eradicate the long-standing prejudice many people have against the whole concept of shooting photos and video with a tablet rather than a phone, but kudos to Apple for erring on the side of quality.

What else? The base iPad Pro models double their storage to 64 GB of space for your apps, photos, movies, documents, and the like, and now go all the way up to a crazy 512 GB of space, which I would mock as wretched excess if I didnt find the idea of a half-terabyte tablet tantalizing. And while Apple doesnt like to talk about RAM, the 10.5-inch iPad has 4 GB of the stuffdouble that of the 9.7-inch version, and helpful in scenarios such as if youve loaded up Safari with so many open tabs that the tablet needs copious free memory to wrangle them all at once. (The 12.9-inch iPad Pro had 4 GB from the get-go.)

As with the original and new 12.9-inch iPad Pros, the 10.5-inch model incorporates USB technology that allows it to charge nearly twice as fast as it does via its bundled Lightning cable and power brick. This requires buying a USB-C charger and USB-C-to-Lightning cable separatelywhich will run you at least $94and is an attractive option for those willing to spend the money. Still, it would be even better if the iPad Pro charged that quickly right out of the box.

The more I used the 10.5-inch iPad Pro, the more I felt like its full potential will be unlocked only when iOS 11 ships, with its powerful new features for juggling apps and files on an iPad. Apple seems to agree with that take, since its already showing the iPad Pro running the software upgrade on its site even though consumers wont get their hands on the final version for a few months. More than any other maker of computing devices, this company knows that its the interaction of hardware and software that matterswhich makes this new tablet, excellent though it is, a prelude to the next-generation iPad experience yet to come.

Harry McCracken is the technology editor for Fast Company, based in San Francisco. In past lives, he was editor at large for Time magazine, founder and editor of Technologizer, and editor of PC World.

More

More here:
10.5-Inch iPad Pro Review: A Better Window Into The World Of Apps - Fast Company

Partner Post D48 is a different type of energy management company offering no-cost initial analysis, complete energy audits, full spectrum low-to-high tech efficiency analysisand multiple financingsolutions.Turn-key renewable power production and storage project management services are available on request.

In the world of air conditioning, air cooled chillers have always been more efficient than conventional refrigerant based air conditioners, up to 300% more efficient in some cases. The problem was that these chillers are usually over 10-Tons in size and most home/office air conditioners specified or installed are refrigerant based systems and less than 10-Tons. So 95% of the time designers and builders use ducted 3-Ton and 5-Ton, refrigerant based air conditioning or heat pump systems in new construction, small commercial and replacement projects. In addition, no thought was expended on how a climate control system could add to hot water production and take advantage of solar thermal and or electric systems designed into or existing at an increasing number of new and retrofit projects.

Chiltrix has thought about these opportunities and recently updated its CX34, 2-Ton mini-chiller heat pump listing on the California Energy Commission web site to incorporate the CX34s world record setting efficiency data recently certified by AHRI.

As a high quality chiller with a 20-year service life, multiple air handler capability, scalable from 24,000 to 72,000 BTUs of air conditioning, ductless split with variable speed motors; the CX34 checks all the boxes when it comes to being ultra-efficient and dependable. It leaves other comparable units 37% to 150% behind in ILPV EER efficiency and up to 300% more efficient under NLPV conditions. Both ILPV and NLPV are specified in the AHRIs, (Air Conditioning Heating Refrigeration Institutes) 550/590 industry Standard. ILPV is what SEER is to standard air conditioners, the NLPV rating is used for the CX34 when its humidity control option is in use and loop water temperatures fluctuate out of the ILPV standards to maintain a desired indoor humidity level.

The patent-pending Chiltrix offers a DHC humidity control option which is unique to the CX34 and allows users to set specific inside humidity levels higher for a healthier inside environment while saving even more energy during its operation. Other systems cannot provide this important aspect of total indoor climate control.

To put the efficiency of the CX34 in perspective, lets look at a new 100 home project in southern California, (at least 20-miles from the beach) with an average of 1200 square feet of living space per home and the CX34 is used for primary hot water, heating and cooling. The residents of this project would have a combined average of an additional $90,000.00 per year of disposable income that would eventually make its way into the local economy or the homeowners education/retirement accounts. Either way, the effect is a healthier more prosperous community.

So lets review:

In addition to the CX34s attributes above; it is solar ready. With a variable speed 208/240 single phase soft start of 2 amps, the CX34 makes it easy on inverters and battery banks and practical to integrate into solar PV systems. It can also connect directly with solar water heating systems for heating purposes and be an ultra-efficient primary source for hot water thus saving the user even more on related energy costs.

Finally the CX34 is priced about the same or less as quality conventional new or replacement HVAC hardware. If ducting or ducting replacement/repair is factored in the CX34 is often the less expensive option. Builders and contractors can also save on new construction and replacement projects by using in-house install personnel since there is no requirement for a specialty license to install the CX34.

New zero energy and Title 24 compliant home buyers, commercial tenants and system replacement customers benefit greatly from reduced AC operation noise levels, a more comfortable and healthier interior environment, contributing to local carbon reduction strategies and saving up to 50% on climate control and water heating related energy costs as a result of the CX34 being the primary hot water, heating and air conditioning system for their home or office.

Yes, the people at Chiltrix thought of that.

Go to: http://www.chiltrix.com for pricing and technical documents or call; 909.223.7357 to discuss your specific application.

See the original post:
World Record AC Efficiency for Zero Energy Homes - Inland Empire

While heat pump water heaters are not known by every customer, they are a choice every customer should know about. Whether its for an emergency or planned replacement, a heat pump water heater (HPWH) is the most energy-efficient choice, providing your customers hot water needs today, while saving them more than 50 percent of electric water heating costs for years to come.

They can also be a business booster since the profitability of HPWHs is typically higher than a standard water heater, making each sale a valuable opportunity.

In the Pacific Northwest, Hot Water Solutions, hotwatersolutionsnw.org, an initiative funded by utilities in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana through the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, is working to dramatically increase consumer demand for HPWHs through consumer awareness, education, and monetary incentives over the next few years. The initiative is also working to boost business for contractors and installers with free technical and sales training.

Elsewhere in the U.S., there is also a great opportunity for growth. And with a little background knowledge, contractors could become leaders in their service area.

HPWHs have been around since the 1980s, but todays models are a far cry from their predecessors. And, while todays models are a great option for customers, there are still misperceptions. This article debunks five common myths about HPWHs, and provides actionable strategies to build your sales.

Five myths about HPWHs

Myth No. 1: HPWH technology may not produce enough heat to quickly recover when hot water is in high demand, and theyre loud.

HPWHs offer the best of both worlds: maximum energy savings and reliable recovery time. In fact, first hour ratings for HPWHs are just as high as electric tanks. Newer HPWH technology, used in Tier 3 tanks, works to maximize the most recently heated water for its end uses.

To maximize hot water recovery; larger tank sizes may be advisable based on your customers needs. Manufacturer and sizing guidance will help with this. It is also helpful to encourage customers to use the Hybrid Mode, so when extra hot water is required, electric elements will kick in to boost hot water. Hybrid Mode provides economy when you want it, power when you need it.

While HPWHs generate some operational noise, around 45 decibels or so, the sound is comparable to the background noise from a portable fan. When the units are installed in a separate room from the living space very few homeowners are aware they are operating.

Myth No. 2: My customers just want a quick, like-for-like replacement.

The truth is, its hard to predict what a customer will or wont pay for, or know what they can or cant afford. To be fair to all customers, offer them choices. Start off by asking questions to find out what the customers interests and needs are. Then provide a series of choices, including the best possible one appropriate for the customers needs.

In the long run, providing choices to all customers, without assumptions, will produce greater sales across all price categories, as well as more satisfied customers.

Myth No. 3: Homeowners wont pay extra for a high-efficiency water heater.

In some cases, upgrading to a HPWH could be comparable in price to a standard electric tank due to available tax credits, manufacturer rebates, and local utility promotions. Heres how it might work:

On average, a customer will pay $2,500 for a HPWH compared to $1,300 for a standard electric water heater. However, in many regions, available rebates can dramatically decrease the upgrade investment for the HPWH. Many manufacturers are offering up to $300 in instant markdowns to help attract more customers to their products. Many local electric utilities are offering rebates to reward their customers who choose energy efficiency. In the Pacific Northwest, for example, customers can qualify for up to $800 in utility rebates.

Its important to remember too that HPWHs generally cost half as much to operate as a standard electric water heater, saving many homeowners $300 a year or more. Using available manufacturer rebates, plus utility rebates could mean there is very little payback time for the initial investment. For customers using only manufacturer rebates, it will take up to two years for a 100 percent return-on-investment. After that, all of the savings go right into the homeowners pocket.

Myth No. 4: HPWH installation requirements are too complicated and may require maintenance and call backs.

As long as you have the skills to install a standard electric water heater, you have the skills to install a heat pump water heater. Its true it may be easier to stay with the models you are most familiar installing. However, once trained, qualified installers will find that the few additional installation requirements for a HPWH are straightforward and typical of other plumbing, heating and air conditioning products they routinely install.

Some of these installation considerations include:

Locating the HPWH in a place with ambient temperatures that do not drop below 40 degrees Fahrenheit, such as the basement or a utility room

Possibly exhausting the cooler air conditioned air if needed

Having adequate space for the products footprint and height

Installing a condensate drainage line

Ensuring continued access for maintenance (e.g., filter changes)

For worries about maintenance and call backs, with proper homeowner education, filter maintenance can be easily managed. And, if the condensate drainage is installed properly, this shouldnt add customer call backs.

Myth No. 5: HPWHs take too much time to install and are less profitable for my business.

The fact of the matter is HPWHs have the potential to be very profitable. Its the contractor who determines their selling prices by considering product costs, material costs, labor costs, overhead costs, selling costs and desired net profit. So, it does not matter if two HPWHs or three standard water heaters are installed in the same day if the total profit for the day is the same.

The business-savvy contractor considers both the profitability of a single job and the total profits produced per installer per day when establishing their pricing. Simply price each job with a gross profit per day target in mind and you can make more money and create happier customers.

For contractors who want to learn more about HPWHs, there are some great resources available. Building your knowledge, and finding the sales model that works best for you, are the keys to making HPWH sales work well for your business, all while being a leader in energy efficiency and customer services.

Resources:

Hot Water Solutions, http://www.hotwatersolutionsnw.com, offers tools to make selling HPWHs easy, including sales training, product features and benefits, and current financial incentives available. Also, check with your local utility to learn about current rebates available to your customers and any install requirements needed to qualify.

Jill Reynolds oversees the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliances heat pump water heater initiative, Hot Water Solutions, which focuses on promoting the development and adoption of heat pump water heater technology. Prior to joining NEEA, Reynolds managed several residential programs for a variety of Northwest utility and municipal clients. Programs included single family weatherization, single and multifamily direct install, retail products and lighting, and single and multifamily audits. She is a graduate of Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon. Additionally, she holds JD from Lewis and Clark law school in Portland.

View original post here:
5 common myths and tips when selling heat pump water heaters - Contractor Mag

LAWTON, OK (KSWO) The City of Lawton has completed phase three of an energy-savings initiative that began in 2007. The City of Lawtons Information Technology Division teamed with Quasar Data Center of OpTerra Energy to virtualize 20 servers managing access to centralized services in the citys network.

The work is the most significant IT undertaking to date, according to City of Lawton IT Supervisor Cindy Price.

The cost of our physical servers and the cost of some of the support software that went along with those will no longer be required, Price said. The management and maintenance tools that we will have available now are so much more sophisticated and efficient compared to what we had before. This is an exciting change for us.

Quasar Data Center signed a 15-year energy-savings deal with the City of Lawton. Most of the decommissioned servers will be transported to the Quasar Data Center headquarters to form a disaster recovery center for the City of Lawton.

City of Lawton Network Support Technician Liz Brundige and City of Lawton Network Administrator Candy Williams completed much of the technical development and configuration to the citys customized Cloud Computing solution.

This was a big undertaking but it was extremely important to have done to protect the infrastructure of the City of Lawton, Price said.

The consolidation of servers will not only save energy; the removal of unused servers will simplify management strategies, increase harbor failure resiliency and cut down the time that technicians regularly spend maintaining nearly two dozen pieces of equipment, according to Gonzales.

The infrastructure Lawton had was pretty typical as far as IT goes, in that each server was performing a singular function here, Gonzales said. Now that there are multiple servers on one physical server it will allow for many benefits from heating and cooling advantages, to more space, to shortening the life-cycle of provisioning physical servers.

Projects of phase one and two of the energy-savings initiative with OpTerra included installation of Automated Meter Reading (AMR) water meters, upgrading HVAC and control systems across city facilities, replacing traffic signals with LEDs and upgrading light fixtures at various buildings, among other tasks.

The project, in its entirety, has totaled approximately $16 million a debt to be covered by annual savings from the more energy-efficient equipment and services.

Information provided by the City of Lawton.

Read the original here:
Phase 3 of the City of Lawton energy-savings initiative is complete - KSWO

The 173-acre TechnipFMC John T. Gremp Campus is the first element in north Houstons Generation Park planned community. The 1.7 million-sf complex was completed in March 2016. Two months later, FMC Technologies and European oil and gas equipment technology company Technip formally announced their merger.

The new campus consolidates manufacturing, offices, and amenities for thousands of employees who were spread across six locations in the Houston area.

The Building Team, led by design giant Gensler, developer Trammell Crow, and contractor D.E. Harvey Builders, successfully dealt with requests from the owner after work had already begun.

First, TechnipFMC wanted to change two primary office buildings that were connected at only one level into a single building that would be connected on all levels. The project team used 3D visualization for fast design approval to insert a multi-level vertical connector into shared amenity space on each level.

Next, the owner added a new sophisticated process equipment product line to the project scope very late in the design process. The Building Team created a new design that allowed for placement of an in-ground rail system, underground utility distribution system, and automated welding machine system; all this, after most of the structure was already built.

TechnipFMC then announced that it was developing a new subsea equipment system that was significantly larger and heavier than the original building was designed for. The Building Team modified floor thicknesses, added 50 tons to the crane capacity, revised equipment circulation, and increased the size of the testing area without affecting foundation pours that were already in progress.

The Technip FMC campus in north Houston is marked by a 369,000-sf LEED Gold office building. The 2,036-space parking garage gives priority space to fuel-efficient vehicles. Landscape irrigation uses non-potable water. Photo: RyanGobuty/Gensler.

Building Team Submitting firm, architect, interior architect Gensler Developer Trammell Crow Co. Structural engineer Cardno Haynes Whaley Mechanical engineer Wylie Consulting Engineers Contractor D.E. Harvey Builders

General Information Size 1.7 million sf Construction cost Confidential Construction period April 2014 to March 2016 Delivery method Design-bid-build

More:
Texas technopark: TechnipFMC John T. Gremp Campus - Building Design + Construction (press release) (registration)

Aventura Hospital and Medical Center, Aventura, Florida (Google Earth)

Health systems in central Florida are expected to decelerate the rate at which they acquire physician groups, according to a new report by Cushman and Wakefield.

Part of the reason, the report said, is because independent doctors are largely entering into partnerships with each other, or working under large management groups that prefer to build their own facilities as opposed to leasing them.

Because of that, the great majority of medical office building construction in the state is either by hospital systems or large, independent physician groups. The latter tend to build their facilities as owner-occupiers.

This year could well see an increase in new construction by both of those groups, many of which are expected to have some kind of specialty component, such as cancer or surgery centers. At the moment, the only non-hospital or physician-related business under construction is a mixed use project that contains a blend of medical and professional office uses.

Hospital expansions are being fueled by Florida's fast-growing population, the report said, with the "big three" healthcare systems -- Orlando Health, Florida Hospital and HCA -- all competing for market share. Changes in healthcare delivery are accelerating that, with a focus on overall life improvement and community wellness.

In addition to that trend, vacancies at medical office buildings are dwindling. At 9 percent last year, those vacancies are now down to about 6 percent, and according to the report, that trend is likely to continue.

Twitter: @JELagasse

See more here:
Florida hospitals scaling back on acquiring physician practices, report finds - Healthcare Finance News