In the spring of 2002, Kevin and I entered the first annual Purdue .NET Programming Contest. The basic rules were to create an interesting and useful web service/client system. We ended up with a distributed rendering system for PovRay. Clients could upload PovRay scene files to the server. Then the member community each downloaded a small bit of work and returned the finished product to the server. This can save the clients a lot of time. The system is currently offline for upgrades, but I have posted the original design document and the presentation we gave at the final judging of the project.
I have already implemented some exciting changes such as a more robust file transfer system. Now that I'm running my own web host, I hope to have the system back up and running in the near future.