News

Louise-Ann, a student at Ayr college, has correctly calculated the answer to our competition. To see the answer, check out our competition page.

maidsafe have applied for the "John Logie Baird" award. Details can be found at http://www.johnlogiebairdawards.co.uk/. The judges decide on the winners in December 2008.

We are pleased to announce that maidsafe are sponsoring the award to the top computing student at Ayr College. The award will be made on 31st October 2008.

Following the successful testing of the Python version of the software, we've employed and shoehorned three additional developers into the small maidsafe office to assist with research and development of the C++ Alpha version for easier integration into third party devices.

Thanks to all applicants who applied for the vacancies.

This means we can now deliver the much faster, even more technically robust C++ product.

For any investors who didn't get the July 2008 investor update, please contact Richard at the office.

The purpose of maidsafe travelling to Seattle was to attend Google's scalability conference, and via a separate arrangement for us to meet face to face with Google's Vice President Dr Vint Cerf.

Google's scalability conference had around 300 people in the audience listening to the eight guest speakers. David's presentation was positively received (despite some problems with the microphone) with lots of questions, some disbelief, and some complimentary statements. David's presentation at the Conference is now available for all to see on Youtube.

More importantly the people there were from companies of significant size who could see how the technology, once commercially available, will be extremely useful to them.

During the 90 minute discussion with Dr Vint Cerf he posed some key questions, criticisms, and challenges regarding the maidsafe technology. Ultimately he fulfilled his role in this case as a gatekeeper for people trying to engage Google's attention.

The good news is that he now considers the maidsafe technology to "be worthy of some more whiteboard time before Google take a deep dive into it" and is arranging for us to spend more time with the Director of the Google Seattle office to better understand what we're up to.

At present, we're not sure when this meeting will occur so it's business as usual getting the initial product further optimised and in front of interested parties.

During our time in the US we are also meeting with Scottish Developments International to understand how they can assist with the US element of our business.

We've launched a competition for all those budding cryptologists out there. We've circled our logo with three encrypted English words on our competition page and are offering a prize of glory and fame!

The two-page summary of Perpetual Data which was distributed at Google's Scalability Conference on Saturday is available for download as a pdf document at http://www.maidsafe.net/product/summary.pdf.

Google have released further details of who else apart from maidsafe will be presenting at this year's Scalability Conference in Seattle. Further details can be found on Google's Scalability Conference page.

First vaults on the network! The technical elements of the ALPHA release are now finished and the user interface will be refined over the next two weeks. Once this element has been completed, the maidsafe team will visit some local volunteers/investors and install the ALPHA software onto their PC's and sign them on as some of the initial users of the maidsafe network.

Investors meeting to demonstrate the ALPHA1 release was held at the office Friday 15^th February. A business update and some essential shareholder resolutions were also passed to allow further investment.

The demonstrations were from an initial install and running locally of PD ALPHA1 showing off many features such as self authentication, backup restore and secure sharing were very well received. This was followed by a demonstration of a network release showing off perpetual data, ranking and network self healing. These demonstrations were all successful and although many people may not have realised the extent of what they were seeing all seemed to be very happy with progress, to say the least.

We took in some more investment and would like to state that whilst we are still in pre-launch state we are looking for further investment and our existing investors are always a first choice for us, so any investors wishing to increase their shareholding can do so by simply contacting the office. We are also speaking to some larger commercial concerns with a view to investment and market readiness.

The evening showed the technical risks are all but gone now with the inventive and new steps we introduce being clearly shown to work and work very well. We would like to thank all the existing shareholders so far and reaffirm how happy we are to be on this final straight with them prior to launch. The dream that was is in fact becoming very much a reality now and we will all benefit from this final push of hard work.

Finally a big thanks to the developers who have worked tirelessly to make this happen.

David

Investors are invited to attend the release of the ALPHA1 version of PD.

Where: HQ - 82a Portland Street, Troon

When: 15^th February 19:00

The initial release for testing will be made available. We are looking for feedback on performance, look and feel of the system when used as a file sharing and backup system. As this is an initial test on the Internet we expect mixed results, but 0% data loss as will be the PD prime directive for customers. Total Security, Privacy and Freedom.

maidsafe.net would like to thanks all those investors who have had the faith in us to this stage and we are delighted to share this launch with all of these people. There will be further dates for those who cannot make this one. At the meeting you will be informed of progress, see progress and encouraged to assist with the actual launch by providing as much feedback as possible.

Thank you

The maidsafe.net team

Please visit the new product site (requires flash) www.perpetualdata.com

Hope you find the new video interesting - it's much shorter and will be hosted on the maidsafe BEBO profile to encourage users to visit the website and download the product. The 'friends' of Perpetual Data can be found on Bebo by looking for the user ID 'PerpetualD'. The video can be seen at Google video

We have altered the initial product launch to be only a part of the system capabilities. This means in essence PD will appear like a backup / sharing program but much faster and more secure than any other similar product available today.

This will allow the network and user confidence to grow as we release the whole Perpetual Data experience in a more user friendly and less risk manner.