June 29, 2007


Dear Gridfinity Members,

Introduction
Thank you for signing up for Gridfinity! This is the first installment of our newsletter. We will be using this medium to communicate important news about Gridfinity, to tell you what we've been working on, and to let you know what planned developments/improvements we have in the queue. If you have any questions or would like to give us some feedback, please check out the Gridfinity blog, discussion forums, or send us an email. Note that if you would prefer not to receive these newsletters, please go to your Account Settings page to unsubscribe.

The Gridfinity Launch
When we went live with our website, we didn't make (and still have not made) any large-scale announcements. Instead, a few people found out what we were up to and discussions began to take place on forums. This small but steady growth of members has been a fortunate way for us to get started, as it has allowed us to resolve many of the initial problems (without impacting too many people) and quickly add features at an early stage. (We are constantly working on adding new features and urge anyone experiencing problems or desiring features to let us know!) At this time, we are ready to start ramping up the power of Gridfinity and need your help so that our computing capacity is ready for buyers.

Referrals
The best way to expedite the flow of paid work-units is to let your friends know about us and refer them to sign up! We are providing this personalized referral link for you to forward on to your friends and family, and also invite you to use our referral form to help get the message out. For each person that signs up with your link, you will receive an additional 1% on top of the payouts they receive. Also, remember that our 90% payout is a limited time offer, so please spread the word before it expires on July 31, 2007!

Gridfinity Buyers
As we have mentioned on a few forum posts, we have a buyer signed up and ready to make use of the grid as soon as it reaches sufficient computing capability. In the meantime, we are actively recruiting more buyers and are offering to further share revenue generated if you refer a buyer. Please pass this personalized buyer link on to anyone you know that could make use of Gridfinity, and we will give you 5% of what they pay us for the first year!

Updates and Features
In response to the great feedback we've been getting, we've been able to put many new features into both our website and our client software. Here's a list of some of the things we've already added to our system:

* Test workunits to check Gridfinity installation/configuration
* Added a blog to help members keep up-to-date about Gridfinity development
* Added project preference to the Members section so that you can adjust the time spent on Gridfinity relative to other BOINC projects
* Created option to resend confirmation emails (some emails were getting lost because of spam filters; make sure you add accounts@gridfinity.com to your whitelist!)
* Added support for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2003 (both 32-bit and 64-bit editions)


Virtualization Change
Shortly after our launch we became aware that our preferred virtualization option, QEMU, had recently moved from a proprietary, non-free model to a less restrictive license. Switching virtualization options required large changes to our backend system, but we found it to be a welcome change as it freed our end-users from having to download, install, and configure (the relatively large and clunky) VMware Player. It also removed what would have become an increasingly common source of configuration error, as we can now distribute and configure QEMU entirely through BOINC. More information about this switch is written on our blog post.

Planned Developments
We have a long queue of features we are planning on implementing, largely based on user suggestions. Here are some of the planned improvements:

* Computing Teams
* Server Status Page
* Workunit Filter (if you would like to exclude assisting certain projects)
* Support for suspending running workunits


We hope to be adding these things and many others in the coming weeks.

In Conclusion
We hope everyone is excited about Gridfinity and will continue to help us by giving feedback.


Happy crunching,
The Gridfinity Team


Gridfinity newsletters let you know about news, updates, and important notices from Gridfinity. You may opt-out of Gridfinity emails at any time by changing your profile settings in the Account Settings tab of the Members section. Gridfinity respects your privacy and works to ensure that your personal information, including your email address, is never released to outside sources. Our privacy policy is located on our website.

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