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ICQ ("I Seek You") Comes to the Rescue on Worldwide Project Collaborations
By Evan H. Shu, AIA It would be hard to find two places further apart on the globe than Hobart, Tasmania, and Avon, Conn. Yet from these two disparate locations, an Australian architect and an American computer programmer closely collaborated on a recent project almost as if they were sitting in cubicles next to one another. Using the Internet and a popular, free program called ICQ--or "I seek you"--the two men conversed via E-mail in "real-time" and exchanged CAD data. Unlike "chat rooms," which bring people together by happenstance and subject matter, ICQ lets E-mailers from any Internet domain know when the people they want to correspond with are online. Mirabilis' ICQ (www.icq.com) software was acquired in 1998 by America Online, which has its own variation of this interface called Instant Messenger. Together, the two claim more than 65 million users. The Connecticut half of the collaboration, David Giesselman, chief programmer for DataCAD, was putting together an update feature for his company's software that would allow variations for the display of metric numbers depending on which metric standard is adopted. For example, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, among others, use a metric standard called AS1100 standard, which differs subtly in its display of metric numbers from, say, the German DIN standard. As architects are universally picky about how dimensions are displayed, it was crucial to Giesselman to get it right. His Australian partner was Ian Johnson, principal of a small Australian architectural firm whose ICQ number Giesselman noticed on an E-mail correspondence with the company. Using the real-time exchange, Giesselman sent Johnson incremental program updates while conversing with him about such minutiae as, "If the distance dimensioned is one meter, should the numerical string be displayed as '1 000' or '1'?" Says Johnson, "With David [Giesselman] at his desk pondering the challenge and myself trying to get a project or two out at all hours of the night, ICQ was a natural." Giesselman says he loved the process: "The ability to converse in near real-time with Ian made my job a reality even though I had no prior knowledge of Australian standards." This example bodes well for similar close collaborations between architects and their consultants or even their clients, whatever the distance that separates them. (Excerpted from the Tech Briefs column of Architectural Record, June 2000)

ICQ ("I Seek You") Comes to the Rescue on Worldwide Project Collaborations

By Evan H. Shu, AIA

It would be hard to find two places further apart on the globe than Hobart, Tasmania, and Avon, Conn. Yet from these two disparate locations, an Australian architect and an American computer programmer closely collaborated on a recent project almost as if they were sitting in cubicles next to one another. Using the Internet and a popular, free program called ICQ--or "I seek you"--the two men conversed via E-mail in "real-time" and exchanged CAD data.

Unlike "chat rooms," which bring people together by happenstance and subject matter, ICQ lets E-mailers from any Internet domain know when the people they want to correspond with are online. Mirabilis' ICQ (www.icq.com) software was acquired in 1998 by America Online, which has its own variation of this interface called Instant Messenger. Together, the two claim more than 65 million users.

The Connecticut half of the collaboration, David Giesselman, chief programmer for DataCAD, was putting together an update feature for his company's software that would allow variations for the display of metric numbers depending on which metric standard is adopted.

For example, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, among others, use a metric standard called AS1100 standard, which differs subtly in its display of metric numbers from, say, the German DIN standard. As architects are universally picky about how dimensions are displayed, it was crucial to Giesselman to get it right.

His Australian partner was Ian Johnson, principal of a small Australian architectural firm whose ICQ number Giesselman noticed on an E-mail correspondence with the company.

Using the real-time exchange, Giesselman sent Johnson incremental program updates while conversing with him about such minutiae as, "If the distance dimensioned is one meter, should the numerical string be displayed as '1 000' or '1'?"

Says Johnson, "With David [Giesselman] at his desk pondering the challenge and myself trying to get a project or two out at all hours of the night, ICQ was a natural."

Giesselman says he loved the process: "The ability to converse in near real-time with Ian made my job a reality even though I had no prior knowledge of Australian standards." This example bodes well for similar close collaborations between architects and their consultants or even their clients, whatever the distance that separates them.

(Excerpted from the Tech Briefs column of Architectural Record, June 2000)