Video: Cure Diseases and Find Alien Life With Your Computer or Phone
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The easiest way to volunteer, ever.
Want to help the world but don't have much time? Offering up spare processing power on a computer or smartphone has become the easiest way to volunteer.
To start, download the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computer or BOINC manager, an open source software for volunteer computing. BOINC works by gathering thousands of computers to work as one. With BOINC installed as a screensaver, your computer contributes when you aren't using it. And the software doesn't slow down your machine.
BOINC is available on Mac, Windows and Linux. For those who want to volunteer a smartphone, it works with Android devices, too.
From the BOINC manager, you can choose from a list of projects you want to contribute to, such the University of Washington's Rosetta@home, which models new protein to take on Alzheimer's and other diseases, or SETI@home, which uses the multitude of computers to search through radio telescope data for signs of alien life.
Can't decide on just one? World Community Grid acts as an umbrella for multiple projects like mapping cancer markers, unlocking genomes and making solar energy more efficient.
To learn more about volunteer computing, check out the video below from CNET:
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