Genielux is my new favorite tool. It has an updated list of the majority of gear that most lighting vendors carry. The user simply types in their current location and they can then scroll through a list of fixtures on the program. Say you are looking to rent 35 Atomic strobes. The app will tell you who the closest vendor (who rents these) to your location is. They won’t tell you if they are in stock, but it sure beats any alternatives. Years ago, I had to sift through pages of a printed guide to find some truss in North Carolina. What seemed like an easy task at first soon occupied my entire morning. I found this app when a client requested a ceiling of star strobes for a hotel job. I figured I would need to rent them from a few companies and it would be a logistics nightmare to get the correct ones back to the right company after the gig. But, lo and behold, I found someone who owned over 500 of these things, and they were only 200 miles away.
—Nook Schoenfeld, from “LD-at-Large,” PLSN, March 2012
