From: Rohit Khare (rohit@uci.edu)
Date: Mon May 01 2000 - 18:37:30 PDT
>Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 16:12:28 -0700 (PDT)
>From: nelson@monkey.org (Nelson Minar)
>Subject: GeeK: my company launched!
>
>I'm writing to brag - my company has just officially launched,
> http://www.popularpower.com/
>
>We're building a general purpose Internet metacomputer, along the
>lines of SETI@home but for arbitrary programs. Check us out!
>
> nelson@monkey.org
>. . . . . . . . http://www.media.mit.edu/~nelson/
Founded in January, 2000, the company is led by Marc Hedlund, CEO,
and Nelson Minar, CTO, who have collaborated for more than ten years.
Hedlund was the founder and head of Lucasfilm's Internet Division
(now Lucas Online) from 1997 through the release of Star Wars:
Episode I in 1999. Prior to that Hedlund was Director of Engineering
at Organic Online; and CTO at Webstorm, where he developed one of the
first Internet shopping cart applications. Minar is a graduate of the
MIT Media Lab, where he studied with Pattie Maes in the Software
Agents group. His work there culminated in the release of Hive, a
software platform for creating distributed applications. Prior to
that Minar was at the Santa Fe Institute, where he helped develop
Swarm, a software package for multi-agent simulation of complex
systems. Both Minar and Hedlund are graduates of Reed College.
Popular Power is funded by a group of private angel investors,
including: Jolly Chen, CEO of Chen Capital LLC and one of the authors
of the Postgres95 database; Brian Behlendorf, CTO and founder of
Collab.net and President of the Apache Software Foundation; Sam
Pullara, Dave Brown, and Adam Messinger of BEA WebLogic; Michael
Smith, CTO, and Maurice Werdegar, VP and Investment Strategist, both
of MetaMarkets.com; Max Metral, CTO of PeoplePC and former CTO of
Firefly Networks; and several other industry veterans. The company is
now in conversations with several Silicon Valley venture capital
firms concerning its first round of venture financing.
================================================
Popular Power is building a platform for Internet-wide distributed
computing. The Popular Power Worker software allows Internet users to
participate in large-scale computational projects such as vaccine
research, computer graphics rendering, financial simulations,
Internet databases, and many others. Using the power of
Internet-connected computers working together, Popular Power can
tackle problems previously thought unsolvable.
The Popular Power Worker software acts like a screensaver, activating
when the user is away from their computer, getting a small piece of a
large computing task from the Popular Power site, and then returning
the results. This model has recently gained wide attention due to the
accomplishments of the SETI@home project and other, similar volunteer
Internet efforts. Popular Power is the first distributed computing
company to release software allowing any business to do work on its
platform -- earlier efforts were only able to do one job at a time,
which is insufficient for commercial applications. Once the final
release of the platform is available, users will be compensated for
work done on their computers, earning rebates, discounts, or gift
certificates for Internet purchases. The company will also donate
time to non-profit and public interest projects.
We believe distributed computing is the next frontier in the
development of the Internet. The distributed computing applications
that have emerged recently -- SETI@home, ICQ, Napster, and others --
are the most exciting applications the Internet has produced. Popular
Power is building a platform for distributed computing, starting with
a revenue stream from distributed processing of large computing
tasks, and building out from there.
Popular Power is launching its network with a non-profit medical
research application, available today. The company will donate
resources to an ongoing research project that utilizes computer
modelling as one technique to better understand influenza
vaccination. For Internet users, this allows participation in a
project that can have an impact on public health, and help save
peoples' lives. For biotechnology companies, this application serves
as a good reference application, demonstrating the power of the
platform and providing an example implementation.
===============================================================
If you are interested in partnering with Popular Power, please fill
out our partnership inquiry form or just drop us a line at
<bizdev@popularpower.com>.
Distribution Partnerships
As a distribution partner, your company can benefit from increased
revenue, a better connection to your customer, and a stronger
community association with your Internet presence. Companies that
distribute the Popular Power Worker can see their users' Worker
earnings turned into currency at their site -- for instance, your
users could be paid for their Worker revenue in gift certificates at
your e-commerce site. In addition, distribution partners get a
co-branded desktop presence, and if appropriate, a choice of
non-profit projects to support with their users. The Popular Power
Worker can help you build a community on your site by bringing your
community participants together around a common endeavor.
Application Software Partnerships
As a manufacturer of high-performance computing software
applications, you stand to dramatically widen your customer base by
providing connectors to the Popular Power platform. Unlike a full
platform port, Popular Power allows you to maintain your current user
interface, while lowering the cost to your customer of
compute-intensive applications on the backend. No longer will you be
limited to customers who can afford server farms and supercomputers;
instead, the power of these resources can be made available to any
group or any company.
Screensaver Content Providers
The Popular Power screensaver is a unique opportunity for artists,
photographers, animators, and programmers to display their work. Our
screensavers are made in Macromedia Flash, a well-known and supported
authoring environment. By providing screensaver content and
distributing the screensaver from your site, you have the opportunity
to earn a referral fee for the users you bring onto the platform. In
addition, Popular Power will establish content syndication
partnerships with qualified companies and individuals.
Non-Profit Activities
If your site or organization participates in non-profit or public
interest activities, Popular Power may be able to help. Your project
can gain needed resources and exposure by running on our platform. We
are particularly interested in activities that will help alleviate a
common concern or need, but we will also consider more narrowly
focused activities when we can have a great impact on their work. In
any case, please feel free to get in touch -- we'd love to hear about
your efforts and see if we can help.
================================================================
April 25, 2000
Popular Power Launches; Announces Preview Release of its Distributed
Computing Platform
SAN FRANCISCO -- Popular Power, an Internet startup building a
platform for distributed computing, launched today, posting a preview
release of its client software and inviting Internet users to join.
The Popular Power Worker software allows Internet users to
participate in large-scale computational projects such as vaccine
research, computer graphics rendering, financial simulations,
Internet databases, and many others. Using the power of
Internet-connected computers working together, Popular Power can
tackle problems previously thought unsolvable.
The Popular Power Worker software acts like a screensaver, activating
when the user is away from their computer, getting a small piece of a
large computing task from the Popular Power site, and then returning
the results. This model has recently gained wide attention due to the
accomplishments of the SETI@home project and other, similar volunteer
Internet efforts. Popular Power is the first distributed computing
company to release software allowing any business to do work on its
platform -- earlier efforts were only able to do one job at a time,
which is insufficient for commercial applications. Once the final
release of the platform is available, users will be compensated for
work done on their computers, earning rebates, discounts, or gift
certificates for Internet purchases. The company will also donate
time to non-profit and public interest projects.
"Distributed computing is the next frontier in the development of the
Internet," said Popular Power CEO Marc Hedlund. "The distributed
computing applications that have emerged recently -- SETI@home, ICQ,
Napster, and others -- are the most exciting applications the
Internet has produced. Popular Power is building a platform for
distributed computing, starting with a revenue stream from
distributed processing of large computing tasks, and building out
from there."
Popular Power is launching its network with a non-profit medical
research application, available today. The company will donate
resources to an ongoing research project that utilizes computer
modelling as one technique to better understand influenza
vaccination. For Internet users, this allows participation in a
project that can have an impact on public health, and help save
peoples' lives. For biotechnology companies, this application serves
as a good reference application, demonstrating the power of the
platform and providing an example implementation.
===============================================================
I am not a Windows user. When will you have software available for my computer?
The Popular Power Worker is written using two technologies -- Sun
Microsystem's Java programming language, and Macromedia's Flash
animation format -- that are supported on a wide variety of computer
platforms. We have released our first preview for Microsoft Windows,
but we are developing Worker software for several other platforms,
including Macintosh, Linux, and Solaris. Other platforms may be
supported based on demand. If you have an opinion about which
platforms we should support, please feel free to send us feedback.
Do you plan to open-source the Popular Power Worker?
We are planning to provide a source release of the Worker software
early next year. In addition, we are asking some of the non-profit
projects we support to provide source code for their applications.
Note, however, that we are not asking our customers to provide source
code for their applications. Many of our customers have proprietary
algorithms or data that they would wish to protect. We protect your
computer's security by running customer code inside a security
"sandbox," which is the same way your Web browser protects you from
malicious code at Web sites you visit.
=============================================================
Our software works like a screensaver, activating when you are not
using your computer and getting in touch with our site. We give you a
small part of a large computing task, like finding a new treatment
for a disease, rendering computer graphics, or analyzing complex
data. Your computer works on the task while the screensaver is
running, and then returns the results to us. When you return to your
computer (when you move your mouse or press a key on the keyboard),
our software immediately stops work.
During the Preview Release period, while we are testing our system,
we are donating computing power to non-profit projects, and we are
starting tests of commercial projects. When we have finalized this
testing period and we send out an official release of the Worker
software, we will start to compensate our users for the time we use
on their computers. For instance, we might provide a discount off
your Internet Service Provider bill each month, or we might give you
a gift certificate for an online store. If you are a business with
more than 100 computers running the Worker software, we will pay you
directly for the work your computers do. (Please note, we can only
pay you for work done on computers you own -- not computers your
employer owns!)
When you register, you will be asked to choose a username and
password, and provide an email address. If you have more than one
computer, and you want to receive credit for them all, simply enter
the same username, password, and email address each time you install.
Your computers will be automatically linked into one account.
The more work you do on the system -- both during the Preview Release
and after -- the better ranking you will get in our system. After our
official release, when two users' computers are available for work,
the user with the better ranking will get first crack at the
higher-paying jobs. So, the more jobs your computer does, starting
today, the more you will earn in the future.
We know that different users will have different reasons for joining
Popular Power, and we want to give each user control over the types
of work done on their computers. We provide this control by letting
you choose how to balance the work done on your system. You can
either choose to maximize your earnings -- working on commercial
projects of any type, with the goal of getting the greatest reward --
or you can choose to maximize your nonprofit work -- donating your
time to projects you want to support. You can also choose a balance
between these two extremes.
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