Alternatives for closed down cancer research screensaver
Howard Lake | 7 June 2007 | News
Following the discontinuation of the United Devices screensaver in aid of cancer research, there are still a wide range of alternative distributed computing projects where PC users can donate their spare processing capacity to scientific and charitable objects.
UK Fundraising first featured grid computing or distributed computing projects back in May 2001. PC users could then donate their PC’s spare processing capacity to help crunch through sections of data in a massive scientific research project. All they had to do was download a small screensaver-type program which would manage the processing in the background.
United Devices offered a range of such projects including one in aid of cancer research. That has now been discontinued.
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Writing in today’s Guardian, Jack Schofield suggested a list of alternative socially useful, non-profit grid computing projects. The list is extensive, but recommends using the BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) to sign up to several projects at a time. This is free open source software for Windows, Mac and Linux which lets users ‘subscribe’ to as many projects as they wish and automate everything.
As as of June 2007, 1 million people and 2 million computers in 234 countries are using BOINC. Berkeley University’s SETI@Home, the search for extra-terrestrial life, started in 1999 and itself has another 5 million users.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.