What?s Coming Up in the World of IT: Save the World through Facebook?

You’ve probably come across so-called distributed computing efforts, such as SETI@Home, where people contribute the spare processing power of their PC when they are not using it to solve some large scale problem, such as the search for extra terrestrial intelligence, or the discovery of new cancer drugs. These projects require you to install a small client application on your PC called BOINC, often in the form of a screensaver, which downloads small blocks of data from the Internet which your PC processes, and then uploads the results back to a central server.

Now Intel has come up with a new way to get people involved, through an addition to the social networking site Facebook. Rather than installing a client application on your PC, you simply need to add the application, called Progress Thru Processors, to your Facebook profile. It will run in the background on your PC, and process data when your PC’s processing power isn’t being fully utilized. You can choose from various projects to support, including Rosetta@home which aims to discover new treatments for diseases such as HIV and maleria.

You can get the Facebook application here:

http://www.facebook.com/progressthruprocessors

Or, if you’re not on Facebook, you can download the original BOINC client here:

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/