Toronto Electricians and Electrical Contractors

Bird Rides Inc. Demands Takedown of News Report on Lawful Re-use of Scooters Every now and then we have to remind someone that it’s not illegal for people to report facts that they dislike. This time, the offender is electric scooter rental company Bird Rides, Inc. Electric scooters have swamped a number of cities across the US, many of the scooters carelessly discarded in public spaces. Bird, though, has pioneered a new way to pollute the commons by sending a meritless takedown letter to a journalist covering the issue. The company cites the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and implies that even writing about the issue could be illegal. It’s not. Bird sent a “ Notice of Claimed Infringement ” over this article on Boing Boing, one of the Internet’s leading sources of news and commentary on social, educational, political, artistic and scientific development in popular culture. The article reports on the fact that large numbers of Bird scooters are winding up in impound l...

In the commercial and industrial transportation sector, reliability in terms of power is critical. Whether it’s an airport, rail system, seaport or a road tunnel, all have critical power needs around requirements including safety that are driving the need for modern, industrial UPS systems. Critical Applications Demand Industrial UPSs Consider railway and subway systems. To ensure passenger safety and security, systems including signaling and telecommunications, passenger access control, emergency lighting, parking, CCTV cameras, fire alarms and medical aid stations must be “always on.” It’s similar at airports, where many of the same critical applications apply, along with lighting for the runways, airfields and terminals; air traffic control systems; passenger boarding systems; ticketing and payment systems; baggage handling and screening systems, and more. As transportation companies look to digitize and integrate their various systems, it’s all the more important that the...

If eCommerce is no longer optional for B2B businesses, the electrical distribution industry is no exception. To stay ahead of the game, both manufacturers and distributors need to acknowledge the B2B buyers’ expectations (which I have further developed in my first blog post ) and respond accordingly. Now how are eCommerce trends reshaping the electrical distribution industry? How are manufacturers’ and distributors’ ways of working impacted?   Managing the digitized customer decision journey: meet customer needs anytime, anywhere in a seamless way When it comes to customer experience, there is an ever-increasing number of digital touchpoints all customers are influenced by and rely on. As the average B2B customer uses six different interaction channels throughout the decision journey and almost 65 percent will come away from it frustrated by inconsistent experiences , B2B companies need to figure out how to fully leverage and integrate these platforms into a seamless ecosystem...

House Fails to Protect Americans from Unconstitutional NSA Surveillance The House of Representatives cast a deeply disappointing vote today to extend NSA spying powers for the next six years by a 256-164 margin. In a related vote, the House also failed to adopt meaningful reforms on how the government sweeps up large swaths of data that predictably include Americans’ communications.                                                                  Because of these votes, broad NSA surveillance of the Internet will likely continue, and the government will still have access to Americans’ emails, chat logs, and browsing history without a warrant. Because of these vot...

In the world of F&B investment budgets are tight and ROI is carefully assessed, especially for CAPEX heavy projects. At the same time, companies must meet expanding demand in markets such as APAC to capture market share. Everyone is asking – how do you get the most out of your existing equipment, while keeping investment costs low? How do you improve throughput and yield without additional investments that will eat into already thin margins? Lean management principles and digital transformation of the continuous improvement process provide a solution. Digital tools that measure, visualize and analyze the factors driving operational performance enable gain greater visibility into companies’ processes. This allows businesses to empower individuals and teams to identify inefficiencies and streamline processes to minimize time, effort, and waste. This is more than just theoretical – New Belgium Brewing decreased downtime by more than 50% using a digital performance managemen...

For semiconductors, technological change is a constant. Today, the semiconductor industry is faced with the three major megatrends – Internet of Things (IoT), self-driving cars and the continued push for a reduction in greenhouse gases. These trends are placing pressure on manufacturers to build in additional efficiencies to meet new market demands and to maintain profitability. One such efficiency opportunity is to reduce unplanned downtime which can cripple operations and increase costs. Critical power solutions for fabrication can minimize the risk of unplanned downtime and reduce costs. These steps to increase efficiencies and reduce costs are even more vital with every chip manufacturing advance because these innovations tend to make semiconductor manufacturing more expensive. An example of one advance is the ongoing shrinking of feature sizes, such as the widespread rollout of the next generation 10- and 7-nm processing nodes . As we examine these trends we quickly see the impo...

There’s no getting around the fact that owning and operating a data center is expensive. But following a few simple, sound best practices can help you reduce your ongoing operations costs, delivering savings year after year. Based on our experiences in managing some 100 large data centers, the following are 5 best practices that most any company can implement to wring savings out of their data center operations . Right-size equipment Most data center equipment, including servers and cooling systems, are most efficient when heavily loaded. The closer you can get to 100% utilization, the more efficient the equipment will be. With many companies moving resources to the cloud or colocation providers, what’s left behind may well be dramatically under-utilized. In many instances, we find we can shut down some infrastructure and move the loads elsewhere. That saves on power and cooling requirements, not to mention ongoing system management. Re-assess your maintenance strategy In the...

Dire predictions about energy and the environment continue to make news, including the report from the U.S. energy forecasting agency . The agency projects that, despite gains in energy efficiency, global population growth and other drivers will cause energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions to keep rising. Many experts are also forecasting that aging power grids and greater occurrences of extreme weather events will continue to put reliability at risk. But the future is not all doom and gloom. Many organizations are now exploring and enacting plans to improve grid resilience, including decentralizing energy generation with microgrids , using smart grid technologies , and incorporating more renewables . At the same time, emerging and converging technologies are giving facility teams the tools they need to take more control of the reliability, efficiency, and safety of their power supply. Power distribution systems have become smarter, giving buildings and manufacturing facil...