Powers Unfiltered

An entrepreneur’s journey into grid computing and partnering with Microsoft, by John Powers

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Entries from June 2008

Good article on Dan’l Lewin in (gasp) the SF Chronicle

June 27th, 2008 · No Comments

The San Francisco Chronicle is not exactly the planet’s leading source of technology news and analysis.  So many of you probably haven’t yet seen Deborah Gage’s excellent article today about Dan’l Lewin, Microsoft’s ambassador to Silicon Valley.  Dan’l is among our most important contacts (and favorite people) at Microsoft, and despite his high-visibility role, many […]

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Tags: Entrepreneurship · Growth · Partnering with Microsoft · Press coverage · Startup Life

Off Topic — Solar Update

June 20th, 2008 · No Comments

As I wrote earlier this month, the Powers household is now generating some of its own electricity, via photovoltaic panels on the roof.  Soon after the installation, our local utility PG&E installed a spiffy new digital meter and certified the system for use.  I turned it on last Thursday afternoon.  Yesterday afternoon (one week later) […]

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Tags: Uncategorized · Utility Industry

Digipede and Velocity

June 9th, 2008 · 2 Comments

The world is indeed getting smaller — and quicker, and better connected. And you might as well talk about what you’re doing, because smart well-connected people will figure everything out immediately anyway. Case in point: Marc Adler’s recent post about Velocity, in which he says: . . . It is no secret that the most […]

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Tags: Grid applications · Partnering with Microsoft

Grid Today connects the dots on Velocity and Digipede

June 9th, 2008 · No Comments

I can’t believe I still haven’t had a chance to write about Velocity, Microsoft’s recently announced in-memory cache.  I think  this is just further proof that I have an endless backlog of topics about which I should be writing. In any case, Derrick Harris of Grid Today has done a great job of connecting the […]

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Tags: Grid applications · Partnering with Microsoft · Press coverage

It works in the lab — now what?

June 9th, 2008 · No Comments

Digipede CTO Robert Anderson is blogging about a recent experiment we’ve conducted in our lab, assessing what it would take to get the Digipede Agent running on Mono. (For those of you who don’t know, Mono is a cross-platform implementation of .NET, developed as an open-source project led by Miguel de Icaza, and sponsored by […]

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Tags: Compute Cluster Server · Grid applications · Partnering with Microsoft · Usability

Digipede Network V2.1 — Beyond the Press Release

June 5th, 2008 · No Comments

Releasing software is hard. Sure, the individual steps like specifying, developing, testing, documenting, and planning support for new software features are difficult enough — but the discipline of knowing when to STOP adding features, and to focus instead on finishing a complete, polished, release-ready product is tougher than it sounds to those outside the industry. […]

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Tags: Customer Service · Entrepreneurship · Grid applications · Growth · Partnering with Microsoft · Usability

Off topic — Going Solar

June 3rd, 2008 · No Comments

Late this winter, we had a whopper of a Pacific storm, and it became clear that the Powers Roof had reached the end of its useful life. (The weather inside may not have been as bad as the weather outside, but it was bad enough.) This wonderful opportunity led to the “while-we’re-at-it” syndrome that plagues […]

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Tags: Uncategorized

Digipede in .NET Developer’s Journal grid computing article

June 3rd, 2008 · No Comments

Derek Furguson of Bear Stearns (now JPMorgan Chase) has a good article in .NET Developer Journal about how to apply genetic algorithms and grid computing to the problem of market timing in stock trading. I was pleased to see that he chose to implement his algorithms using the Digipede Network. His article is in two […]

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Tags: Grid applications · Press coverage · Usability