Are you a person who leaves your computer on all the time including when you're asleep? Can't find a way to force yourself to shut down everytime you're not using your computer?

Then the World Community Grid is for you!

What exactly is the World Community Grid?

It is a large scale initiative supported by IBM, where the processing powers of idle PCs around the world are combined to process research data for not-for-profit organisations and research labs around the world. Through the use of grid computing, packets of data that require processing are sent to idle PCs under the program. This has saved labs around the world an immense amount of cost and time which would have been incurred should the labs have to process the data with their own computers! A quick example from 2003 - in less than three months scientists identified 44 potential treatments to fight the deadly smallpox disease. This process would have taken more than a year without grid computing.

What projects/initiatives are you contributing to?

Only public and not-for-profit projects that benefit humanity can be part of the program. The list of projects change from time to time based on the processing needs of the lab. Among some of the current projects include Fight Aids@Home, Help Cure Muscular Distrophy, Help Fight Childhood Cancer and the Human Proteome Folding project.

What do you get for contributing?

To be honest, there really isn't any reward apart from self satisfaction from knowing that your idle PCs are being put to benefit humanity. However, to add to the fun, the website has a ranking system where you are rewarded with points and medals based on the number of tasks your system processes. There is also the joy of joining a team andcollectively earning points to compete with other teams. Personally I find a lot of fun in watching my statistics grow over time for the different projects (and watching my ranking jump from 350,000 to 240,000).

How do I get started?

It is very simple. Just visit www.worldcommunitygrid.org, register for an account, download the program and you're off! The program will automatically retrieve tasks for processing when your computer is idle. If you're worried about your computer overheating, you can change the settings to only use X% of your computer's processing power. It is a really simple, fun and rewarding process.

So what are you waiting for? Get your computer onto the grid and start contributing to humanity!

By Su Yuen, CHIN (suyuen@gmail.com)