Technical Pro

Moving vertically through the home involves shifting from entry and functional spaces to living and dining areas and terminating in bedroom, shower and private relaxation zones that culminate in an extra-wide, 360-degree zone for enjoying lofted views of the sky and surrounding landscapes.

The first story contains a main entrance and two-car garage, below a second-story equipment, storage and HVAC zone. The third and fourth levels house guest, meeting and work spaces – the fifth features a master bedroom, with a spiral staircase that leads up  kitchen, living and dining room areas. Finally, on the very top floor, there is a wrap-around terrace cantilevered out beyond the main structure (in the water-storage core).

Anyone else reminded of the infamous Panopticon here? Bham Design Studio had to work with local preservation efforts, building codes and the needs of clients to maintain the integrity of the building while making it a useful dwelling. Somehow it still manages to look a good fit for the farmland-filled countryside around it.

Built to last, the original water tower was constructed nearly seven decades ago. The exterior was preserved as best it could be, with the limited introduction of well-scaled windows and respect for the existing concrete and brick on all sides. The interior, for better or worse, was made more modern in style – black and white dominate, but perhaps that works well after all since it provides such compelling contrast with the colorful window-framed environments outside.

Just when you thought you could get everything and the kitchen sink from Amazon, the company began developing a free local delivery service called AmazonTote, so you can have it all delivered faster.

While Amazon’s Subscribe and Save program offers free delivery for items in that section, the new service through AmazonFresh has a much larger inventory — from fresh produce to laundry supplies.

Amazon is testing the new Tote program in its home city of Seattle, according to Financial Times online. Purchases are bagged in reusable totes and delivered to the Seattle participant’s home, free of charge, within the appointed delivery window, either weekly or twice weekly. You can also do returns right from your doorstep. The company is reportedly going to expand the program, but it hasn’t issued a time frame for the expansion.

Other than the limited delivery area at first, what’s the catch? At first glance, it appears that the trade-off is in the price markup, but then, you won’t find a bunch of organic Lacinato kale much cheaper at your local co-op than the $3.19 that AmazonFresh charges. And if you consider gas prices, the cost of driving back and forth to the store balances the hike in the grocery bill. But for many, the sheer convenience of having groceries and other products delivered to their doorsteps more quickly than overnight delivery is worth it, even if it does cost a little more.

If AmazonTote expands, it will obviously create yet another challenge for its competitors. The Financial Times also reports that one of Amazon’s largest competitors, Walmart, is making plans to expand its own online low-cost services. Still, it’s difficult to keep up with a company that offers everything “from A to Z,” as its arrow indicates. Even if you can’t find what you are looking for, AmazonTote makes it easy for customers to request products it doesn’t carry by providing a link on the AmazonFresh shopping site. There’s even a blog site where customers can browse recipes from Amazon’s Chef Dana.

Perhaps it is this kind of service and innovation that makes Amazon so popular with consumers, and as retail focuses even more on its online audience, programs such as AmazonTote may turn online companies into the next generation of box stores.

via AmazonTote Aims for Local Delivery Market.

the emerging Dubai debacle is only starting to play out but it looks like another case of the world’s tallest building heralding a major market top.

“The Skyscraper Index is a concept put forward in January 1999[1] by Andrew Lawrence, research director at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein,[2] which showed that the world’s tallest buildings have risen on the eve of economic downturns.[3] Business cycles and skyscraper construction correlate[4] in such a way that investment in skyscrapers peaks when cyclical growth is exhausted and the economy is ready for recession.[5] The buildings may actually be completed after the onset of the recession or later, when another business cycle pulls the economy up, or even cancelled.[5] Unlike earlier instances of similar reasoning (“height is a barometer of boom”[6]), Lawrence used skyscraper projects as a predictor of economic crisis, not boom.

Lawrence started his paper as a joke (emphasized by a title referencing a comedy show[1]) and based his “index” on mere comparison of historical data, primarily from the United States experience. He dismissed overall construction and investment statistics, focusing only on record-breaking projects.[4] The first notable example was the Panic of 1907. Two record-breaking skyscrapers, the Singer Building and Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower, were launched in new York before the panic and completed in 1908 and 1909, respectively. Met Life remained the world’s tallest building until 1913. Another string of supertall towers – 40 Wall Street, Chrysler Building, Empire State Building – was launched shortly before to the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The next record holders, World Trade Center towers and Sears Tower, opened up in 1973, during the 1973–1974 stock market crash and the 1973 oil crisis. The last example available to Lawrence, Petronas Twin Towers, opened up in the wake of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis and held the world height record for five years. Lawrence linked the phenomenon to overinvestment, speculation and monetary expansion but did not elaborate these underlying issues.[4] The concept was revived in 2005, when Fortune warily observed five media corporations investing in new skyscrapers on Manhattan[3] (none of them, including the tallest New York Times Building, broke any records”

Singer Building
Met Life Tower

Panic Of 1907

40 Wall Street
Chrysler Building
Empire State Building

1929 Stock Market Crash/ Great Depression

Sears Tower
World Trade Center

1973-74 Stock Market Crash/ 73 Oil Crisis

Petronas Twin Towers

1997 Asian Financial Crisis

But here comes the doooozy

2008 World Financial Crisis

via Pittsburgh, Youngstown, Akron, Cleveland Arts And Livable City Blog: November 2009.

Fantastic Music video

See a beautifully produced music video mash-up with artists from several genres blended into one song, You can Download the Mp3 verison from here :

http://official.fm/tracks/157263/download?pwd=.mp3

thanks!
1. Bruno Mars – Just The Way You Are
2. B.O.B. feat. Bruno Mars – Nothing On You
3. Gnarls Barkley – Crazy
4. Britney Spears – Hit Me, Baby, One More Time
5. Jason Derulo – In My Head
6. Justin Timberlake – My Love
7. Lady Gaga – Just Dance
8. Leona Lewis – Bleeding Love
9. Ne-Yo – So Sick
10. Michael Jackson – Black Or White
11. Snoop Dogg – Sexual Eruption
12. Survivor – Eye Of The Tiger
13. Taylor Swift – Fifteen
14. Taylor Swift – Fearless
15. Savage Garden – The Animal Song
16. Snoop Dogg feat. Justin Timberlake – Signs

This is bitchin. In 1953, the Central Intelligence Agency contracted illusionist John Mulholland to create a secret dossier of stealth and misdirection to be used by operatives in the field. All copies of the document were believed to have been destroyed in 1973, but a single copy remained… Intelligence historian H. Keith Melton and retired CIA officer Robert Wallace somehow got their mitts on the surviving copy and have reproduced it. You can buy it for about $15. RAD.

Super Cool Boomerang that opens up like a switchblade…. a dream come true.

OK fellas, I’m about to dork out here… Hold your giggles until the end. See, I’ve gotten a few emails asking about the pens I carry. Typical of me, I like to carry durable stuff that is made to last. Also typical of me, I don’t like to spend a ton of dough. The ideal pen for me is most likely the traditional Fisher Space Pen, but I’ve always been ran off by the $60 price tag. What’s a cheap guy to do?

Click Above to see full Size

Burj Kalifa 800m
CN Tower 553m
Taipei 101 508m
Petronas Towers 452m
Willis Sears Towers 442m
CITIC Plaza 391m
Shun Hing Square 384m
Empire State Building 381m
Central Plaza 374m
Burj Al Arab 321m

But ever since a new proposed building in dubai is coming…  Al Burj 1000m!

There is definitely something going on in Dubai call it compensation or call it just “i got a bigger one”

left: Al Burj, Dubai, proposed 2010, 999.9m
center: Burj Dubai, Dubai, 2009 completion , 807.7m
right: Shanghai World Financial Ctr, Shanghai, 2008 completion, 492m

Also see below Freedom Tower

and below see another proposed building.

Incheon City authorized the Portman consortium to build 151-story twin towers in Songdo International City in the Incheon Free Economic Zone. The towers will be connected by three sky bridges and house a hotel, a convention centers, offices and a shopping malls. The multi-phased $11 billion project is part of Korea’s efforts to transform 1,500 acres of reclaimed land into an unrivaled business hub for Northeast Asia.

When completed, the buildings will be the world’s second tallest building behind the 160-story Burj Dubai that is under constructions.