Summersault Blog

Today’s local paper has a story about a software glitch at the Meijer big-box grocery stores that caused them to ring up all store purchases at half price. From the article:
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RICHMOND, IN – The year 2007 will include the marking of Summersault’s 10th year in existence, and the company has begun making preparations to celebrate.

“We’re so excited to mark this milestone in our history, and we’re looking forward to doing so with our family and friends in the community,” said Summersault’s Principal, Chris Hardie.

The company was founded in August of 1997 by Hardie and Mark Stosberg, while both were Computer Science students at Earlham College. Stosberg and Hardie formed a partnership around a common interest in running a socially responsible business that made professional web development services more accessible to organizations with limited budgets. Read the rest of this entry »

Today, the Palladium-Item published Indiana Attorney General Steve Carter’s recently released “safe online shopping tips.” I thought I would comment and expand on these tips, especially as they relate to Summersault’s experiences with online commerce.
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Congratulations to Charlie Peck and his student group from Earlham College, who just had their LittleFe project featured in the UK information technology journal, the Register: Educators boost US tech fortunes with cheap cluster. There are some good quotes from Charlie, who has served as a colleague and mentor to several Summersault staff:

“There’s something very visceral about it,” said Charlie Peck, a professor at Earlham College and one of the project’s leads, in an interview here at the Supercomputing conference. “If I can make learning this stuff accessible and interesting enough, then the students may be willing to put down their Gameboys.”

Little-Fe is a complete 4 to 8 node Beowulf style portable computational cluster used for teaching key concepts in parallel computing such as speedup, efficiency, and load balancing.

I did an interview this morning with Chris Nolte on 1490 WKBV AM about the “dangers of unsecured home wireless networks.” I thought I would post a few follow up notes about that issue here:

The general problem is that a lot of vendors that make home networking products want their items to be as easy to use “out of the box” as possible, and so they make the default mode of a wireless access point to be one where anyone can join the wireless network created by that device. For the average home user, this means that as soon as they plug in their wireless router to get their own laptop connected wirelessly, they’re also providing a free ride to anyone within a radius of that signal.
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When Summersault was first starting up and were sharing office space with the folks at Infocom, a local ISP now defunct, I remember the talk at the time about creating a wide-reaching local area network in the Richmond area that would allow network traffic flowing from one local organization to another to be routed directly, instead of taking the default circuitous route through the organization’s ISP, the national level point of presence, and then back down through the destination’s ISP. It seemed like such a good idea, and though Infocom did some peering with Earlham and RP&L, the local power company, things never really moved beyond that as far as I knew.
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In our ongoing effort to make technology more accessible and less intimidating to the average citizen, we’re teaming up with the Uptown Innovation Center to present TechTalk, a monthly forum where members of the Richmond/Wayne County Community can come to learn about practical uses of technology. Bring your questions — no item is too small or too novice! We want to help you get the most that you can out of the technologies that you use.

This month’s TechTalk forum is a “Free For All”! That means we’ll have a panel of experts in various areas of technology, talking casually and answering questions about everything from hardware to desktop software to using the Internet and more. Come ask any question you want and we’ll do our best to help you out and point you in the right direction. Or, just come join in our discussion about practical uses of technology in our community.

We are currently offering two sessions this Thursday, March 24th, for your convenience, at the Uptown Innovation Center (814 East Main St):

12 PM – 1 PM (bring your lunch if you want)
5:30 PM – 6:30 PM

If you have technology questions, I hope you’ll join us!

RICHMOND, IN — Main Street Richmond-Wayne County is pleased to announce the winner of the Uptown window decorating contest, part of the “An Uptown Christmas Story” celebration, Summersault, LLC., located at 914 East Main Street.

Chris Hardie, Principle of Summersault, LLC said the theme of the window is ‘The Rise of the Elves: North Pole Revolutions’ with an alternate working title of ‘Lord of the Elves: Return of the Elves’.

Each year the window decorating contest brings holiday cheer to Uptown in unique and special ways as local businesses get into the holiday spirit. The windows were judged on uniqueness and creativity. Read the rest of this entry »

RICHMOND, IN — Indiana Governor Frank O’Bannon traveled to Richmond today to learn more about the exciting economic growth the city is pursuing. Summersault Principal Chris Hardie was asked to talk about the growth of Summersault, as an example of the kind of success the Governor’s “Energize Indiana” program is working to promote.

“We have clients and colleagues throughout Indiana and Ohio, around the country, and abroad,” said Hardie at the conference, “but we know that we couldn’t have that global reach without the wisdom, support, and future-minded thinking of our local community here in Indiana.”

Hardie’s full remarks are available in PDF format. Read the rest of this entry »

RICHMOND, IN – Summersault was recognized by Main Street Richmond-Wayne County today at a breakfast awards ceremony honoring local business and community achievements. Summersault received the Uptown Collaboration Award, which recognizes “collaborative efforts that demonstrate new and innovative ways of working together to support collective goals and attain a shared vision for the enhancement of Uptown Richmond.” Read the rest of this entry »