Workface Acquires Online Business Card Creation Service, Card.ly

September 1st, 2010

Please check out the TechCrunch article for more info.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/01/workface-cardly/

Hardcore Computer adds employees, develops new products

August 12th, 2010

By Jeff Kiger
The Post-Bulletin, Rochester MN

Rochester’s start-up computer maker — Hardcore Computer — is abuzz with activity, shipping a new workstation, while preparing to roll out two more new machines later this year.

With the information technology sector growing for the past six months, Hardcore has been adding employees as it develops new products,

It has 25 employees on staff now, with six of them hired in the past few months.

After wrapping up its beta testing, Hardcore started shipping the Detonator, a liquid-cooled workstation, at the end of July.

This workstation features the same liquid-cooling technology used in its earlier gaming-focused desktop computers, Reactor and Reactor X. With two Intel Xeon processors, the Detonator offers capabilities that make it unique, says Hardcore CEO Al Berning.

“We are the only ones shipping workstations with overclocking capability,” he says.

That means being able to run the machine at increased speeds — up to 4 megahertz — due to submerging its heat-producing components in liquid.

Costing $7,000 to $15,000 each, the first shipments of the finished version of the Detonators went to financial institutions.

That is a market Hardcore had not even targeted for the Detonator.

“They came to us,” says Berning. “We are also targeting the business research, medical imaging and military markets.”

In fact, Military Embedded Systems magazine picked the Detonator as the winner of their Editor’s Choice Award.

“When those internal components’ temperatures go up, system performance goes down,” said Chris Ciufo, Open Systems Publishing Group editorial director and editor of Military Embedded Systems. “Such is the natural order of the embedded electronics world. However, Hardcore Computer’s new Detonator workstation, cooled by liquid submersion methodology, is designed to crush the natural order.”

That cooling ability is the foundation of all the Hardcore machines.

This is the first of the three computer models Hardcore plans to release this year.

The Liquid Blade server is in beta testing. With low energy use and high efficiency, this model is designed for commercial data centers.

That’s a $50 billion market.

Berning hopes to release the final version of the Liquid Blade in the fourth quarter of this year.

That’s the same time the company hopes to roll out another computer model that it has been developing under the radar.

Hardcore’s leaders are not sharing any details about this other model yet, but they do expect to have it shipping to customers in the fourth quarter of 2010.

Full Article - http://www.postbulletin.com/newsmanager/templates/localnews_story.asp?z=7&a=464542