Screensaver Project

Welcome to the screensaver project, an effort to expand the reach and popularity of distributed computing projects. Wikiversity research is all about letting normal users such as yourself participate in and learn from scholarly research. Don't know what protein folding is? Don't know what gravitational waves are? You can still help in researching them! More appropriately, your computer's screensaver can!

What is Distributed computing?
Distributed computing is decentralized and parallel computing, using two or more computers communicating over a network to accomplish a common objective or task. Think Seti@Home, only with other research projects.

How can I help?
Pick a distributed computing project from the list below that interests you, download it, install it, and let your computer run constantly. When the screensaver turns on, the software will begin to process data, periodically returning results and getting more instructions from the project's main server.

If you wish join the wikiversity.org team at the project of your choice. Create one if there is not one already. It will be excellent advertising for us with exactly the highly motivated and some highly educated people who might be interested in wikiversity. It will also help us form a nucleus of users and possibly developers who can put together a distributed grid computing solution when we decide we need one to support Wikiversity's servers or scientific research or learning labs.

List of Distributed computing projects

 * Folding@home - performs simulations of protein folding and other molecular dynamics for disease research
 * Rosetta@home - dedicated to protein structure prediction for disease research
 * SETI@home - analyses radio signals in an attempt to find extraterrestrial life
 * Einstein@home - searches for gravitational waves and other astronomical phenomenon
 * World Community Grid - umbrella for a variety of projects

Please see also Wikiversity Distributed Virtual Supercomputer
 * Wikipedia's List of Distributed Computing Projects

Other types of distributed projects

 * herbaria@home  This is apparently not a distributed computing project but is interesting as a potentential prototype for distributed manual projects that might be suitable for Wikiversity teams.

Note
Though it is a Wikiversity research page, all projects are offsite and not affiliated with Wikiversity. This is considered secondary research. The scope of this page is to inform and better coordinate efforts, such as the establishment of offsite teams and promotion. External links can be added to bad sites, though this is normally caught and reversed before any harm is done. Be forewarned.