I ran an experiment that shows that ZFS compression can improve IO perf by 1.35x, save disk space by 1.77x, and reduce power consumption by 1.09x.

Guess what, I now have ZFS compression=on on my laptop.

Congratulations Micello team for winning the Runner-up award at the AT&T Platinum Fast-Pitch contest!!! Wow!

The event took place at CTIA, held on October 7-8, 2009 in San Diego, CA where AT&T reviewed over 60 entries. The winners received a share in $40,000 of prize money and opportunities for inclusion in an AT&T distribution channel.

Micello has built a database of maps of places people go to shopping malls, college campuses, convention centers etc, and allows users to access, navigate and explore those places using their mobile phones. Unlike, its competitors, Micello keeps its own database of place of interest rather than relying on satellite-based map systems. In addition, by integrating social networking services into the application, Micello brings together all the activity happening inside a building where people gather. 

Find out more at micello.com. 

A balance between processor performance, memory bandwidth, and IO performance all contribute to system performance. Applications like business intelligence and data warehousing (BIDW), and Rich Media are particularly sensitive to overall performance. 

The Sun Fire X4275 is designed for the ground up for powering both rich media streaming applications, and business intelligence and data warehousing applications.

In this webinar, you'll find out:

• The design principles of the Sun Fire X4275 (Intel Xeon 5500 series processors, 64 GB of memory, 12 TB of storage, 8xSSD or 12x15K drives for IOPS performance all in the same 2U chassis, and up to 24 GB of network bandwidth)
• How flash technology can multiply IO performance offering significant savings in cost/stream, cost/IOPS and cost/GB as well as savings in energy and space
• How the Sun Fire X4275 is the building block of the powerful Oracle Exadata V2 server recently announced by Oracle.

Techcrunch50 and Demo are two of the most premier tech events out there, and they both had their share of startup talent. This edition of 'Spotlight your Startup' features 12 startups from each, and you have until Monday to vote.

Mark your calendars! There are a couple of super cool events in November you don't want to miss: SVASE & GABA BIGs Digital Media, and Startup Weekend.

SVASE & GABA Present the BIGs Digital Media, November 19

Social Financing - Using the Web to Mine Money for Your Venture

Raising money from VCs is increasingly difficult for early stage companies--even ones with a good product.  Social networks have been great for generating awareness but how do you turn social equity into funds for your business?  Social financing is working well for entrepreneurs in developing countries and those improving the well-being of society and the environment.  Could that same model work here?  New models are rapidly emerging that are changing the landscape for how businesses raise money. 

Join this dynamic panel of experts as they discuss this timely topic!

• What is social financing?
• What is microfinancing?
• What new tools are available today?
• How companies facilitate sources of social funding
• How social networks can become social financing engines

The Panel: Marc Dangeard, Founder, Entrepreneur Commons; Joshua Sams, Co-Founder & CEO, Sprowtt Marketplace; 2 additional panelists TBD

Moderator: Sumaya Kazi, Sr. Social Media Manager, Sun Microsystems

WHEN: Thursday, November 19

6:00 – 7:00 pm: Networking and hors d’oeuvres

7:00 – 8:15 pm: Panel Discussion and Q&A

8:15 – 8:30 pm: Additional Networking

LOCATION: Sun Microsystems, 12 Network Circle, Building 12 (make a left at the main entrance), Menlo Park, CA 94025. Map

Register now!

BAY AREA STARTUP WEEKEND

WHEN: November 20-22nd

WHERE: The Hacker Dojo

Register Before 10/30 for 20% off – Use code “swearlybird”

There are 10 Startup Weekend events going on for Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) this November! Last year they had over 25,000 events, 3 million participants, and over 1 billion media impressions. 

Additional Locations:

November 13th-15th: Tulsa, OK – Boise, ID – London, UK

November 20th-22nd: New York – Bay Area (Silicon Valley) – Cleveland, OH – Dallas, TX – Los Angeles, CA – Lexington, KY – Atlanta, GA

December 4th-6th: (just a little later) Paris, France – Corvallis, OR – Boston, MA

What’s new:

• Global visibility for your startup – GEW will have amazing exposure and follow-up with national coverage for Startup Weekend and startups in likes of The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, NYTimes, Forbes, and USA Today.
• Meet more investors, vc’s, ceo’s, cto’s, lawyers, and successful entrepreneurs working one-on-one with teams.
• Sunday night voting among your peers will allow one startup to win a grand prize.
• Top teams will be invited to Startup Weekend exclusive spots at the top tech events.
• Spotlight your startup via Startup Weekends global partners.
• Coaching and mentoring for startups after the weekend.
• Free web hosting for startups at the event
• Free business plan guidance
• Other Free software and discounts

Student Tickets are limited – Remember to bring your Student ID!

Startup Weekend is a now a non-profit out of Seattle, WA. 

The Perfect Pitch 2009 is going strong. Richard Branson on stage now with Dan Bliss discussing the Virgin experience, as well the lessons learned for entrepreneurs starting out now. Startups that will be presenting soon include Vubiq, Icon Aircraft, & Didrick Medical. Speakers to follow include Christian Audigier, Tim Draper, Jason Nazar, and many others.

There's a new addition to Digital Hollywood this year, it's called CodeSpace and Sun Startup Essentials has helped put it together. In brief:

The Challenge:
To Build a New Media Product or Service in 36 Hours at Digital Hollywood
Real-Time -Real-Life Development of a Broadband-Mobile Entertainment-Media-Technology App

The Prizes: The winning team members will receive over $5000 in cash and prizes like the Adobe Creative Suite, Adobe Flash Media Server, Sun Hosting Services, Cloud Hosting from Amazon, Creative Services from Blue Monitor, and CDN services from China Cache.

If you're going to be in the LA area next week, definitely come check it out!

Following today's Webinar on Storage for Database, here is a list of resources that you can use to get the best out of ZFS with your database:

• A blog about how to backup MySQL with ZFS
• A blog about ZFS hierarchical caches
• A blog about using SSDs to speed up ZFS writes
  

This event is going to rock the Sun campus in Menlo Park tomorrow. A number of startups will be pitching to investors for a chance to win a "boost package" from North England (funding, PR, free office space, etc.) to launch their business in the UK. Both the pitching startups and presenters are top notch - with most companies having very nice products already in the market.

Program Schedule
12:00PM Lunch
12:30PM Gareth Lewis, Opening Remarks & Geeks Going Global Program
12:40PM Juan Carlos Soto, Sun Microsystems, Global Reach of Sun Startup Essentials
12:50PM Steve Smith, Financing Globally
1:00PM Startup Pitches & Demos
1:55PM Success in Global Entrepreneurship - Richard Irving (Partner: Pond Ventures - The Transitive Story)
2:05PM Startup Pitches & Demos
3:00PM Success in Global Entrepreneurship – Chris Wade (CEO Shozu – The Shozu Story)
3:15PM Success in Global Entrepreneurship – Suranga Chandratillake (CEO Blinkx– The Blinkx Story)
3:30PM Networking

You are invited to join our free Webinar on storage for you database, tomorrow October the 14th 3pm Paris & Berlin, 2pm London, 4pm Jerusalem.

This webinar focuses on how ZFS, SSDs and the Unified Storage Systems are changing the rules in the database storage industry. You will learn how to increase data security, storage scalability, and reduce the price/performance ratio with these technologies. This webinar includes ZFS best practices for databases backup and performance.

To register click here.

You are invited to join our free Webinar on storage for you database, Wednesday October the 14th 3pm Paris & Berlin, 2pm London, 4pm Jerusalem.

This webinar focuses on how ZFS, SSDs and the Unified Storage Systems are changing the rules in the database storage industry. You will learn how to increase data security, storage scalability, and reduce the price/performance ratio with these technologies. This webinar includes ZFS best practises for databases backup and performance.

To register click here.

Looking for a boost to expand to the European and/or Asian markets?

Pitch your startup company on October 14th to global VCs, and the North of England Investment Agency will pay for your trip to the UK to help you connect with partners, vendors and VCs based in the UK. This package is worth over $30k!  

The package will be available to 3-4 companies that prove to be successful through The North of England program. This event is hosted by North of England.

Not ready to pitch yet? There's room for a few observers that want to learn and network. 

Date: Wednesday, October 14
Time: 12 noon - 3:00 pm
Venue: Sun Microsystems Menlo Park campus, Building 15 / Executive Briefing Center

Please RSVP via email by Friday, October 9th.

Agenda 
12:00PM Lunch 

12:30PM Opening Remarks

12:40PM Juan Carlos Soto, Sun Microsystems, Global Reach of Sun Startup Essentials

12:50PM Steve Smith, Finacing Globally in Hard Times

1:00PM Startup Pitches & Demos

1:30PM Success in Global Entrepreneurship, Speaking Company & Questions (CEO Blinkx)

1:45PM Startup Pitches & Demos 

2:15PM Success in Global Entrepreneurship, Speaking Company & Questions (speaker TBC)

2:30PM Networking (3:00PM Close)

Founded in 1995 by entrepreneurs, for entrepreneurs, SVASE, the Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs, is the largest and fastest growing nonprofit association in Northern California dedicated exclusively to empowering early stage entrepreneurs across all technology and life science sectors to build successful companies. As one measure of success, SVASE members raised over $76MM last year by leveraging SVASE events and contacts.

SVASE hosts 10-12 events each month, featuring VCs, Angels and veteran Entrepreneurs as guest speakers, and attended annually by over 6,000 entrepreneurs, VCs, bloggers and press, and our events newsletter is requested by over 10,000 entrepreneurs and executives each week (sign up).  With our web-based services, including 24 Hour Networking, the online SVASE Yellow Pages, the keyword searchable VC Database and Jobs in Funded Startups database, and our links to VC Experts, plus blogs from AlwaysOn and Guy Kawasaki, SVASE is able to help entrepreneurs around the clock and around the world. For further information on how SVASE can empower your startups, go to www.svase.org.

Following an attendee request from yesterday Webinar on Scalable Web Architecture, here is a list of resources that you can use when building the infrastructure for your web-site:

• A dissertation on RESTful architecture 
• Get AMP, memcached, Squid, LigHTTPd & more from Sun. Free license to use, available and supported on both x86 and SPARC
• A website dedicated to scalability
• Best practices for performance and scalability when running popular Web software on SPARC servers (T5120, T5220, T5240)
• If you are interested in iSCSI, a blog about COMSTAR, the new iSCSI stack that comes with OpenSolaris and the Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage
  
• And the Partnertech blog where you can find technical tips to run your application best on Sun, with a tutorial about how to backup MySQL in a second with ZFS