As sustainable design concepts increasingly infiltrate the lucrative residential design and construction market, homeowners looking for reliable information on local architects and contractors with knowledge of the field can encounter a frustrating process.

The holy grail of integrated design still lies just out of reach.

The PDF file format continues its dominance of the portable file market with the release of an updated version of Adobe’s Acrobat, now in version 8, and the launch of a reconstituted edition of the Internet conferencing software Breeze, now called Adobe Acrobat Connect.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions trading, a market-based strategy for mitigating climate change, has been steadily growing over the past few years, and furnishing and building-product companies are among the industries adopting the practice.

Last month’s declaration by a United Nations panel that global warming is “unequivocal,” and that fossil fuel use is “very likely” to blame, should intensify discussion of the already hot topic.