Help Save The World At Work

Learning about distributed computing is like having the scales fall from your eyes.

We use our computers much less than we actually think. We go to meetings, have lunch, take phone calls, grab a cup of coffee, talk with someone in the hall. Those minutes add up to a big chunk of time every day.

A program called the World Community Grid can use that time when your computer is not in use to help change the world. Scientists need computing power to run millions of simulations, calculations and other exercises. A small program you can download in several minutes and install on your computer “loans” your computer to those scientists.

Take a look at some of the projects you can help with simply by installing this program.

Distributed Computing Projects at WC Grid

1. Help Conquer Cancer and Help Fight Childhood Cancer
2. Computing for Clean Water
3. Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy — Phase 2!
4. Clean Energy
5. Discovering Dengue Drugs

That’s just a sample of the work your computer can do the next time you’re in a meeting. You can choose some or all or even just one of the projects. The organizational partners include IBM, UC Berkley and the National Science Foundation.

Your takeaway as a small business leader is that your unused computer cycles can be used to change our world.  Even small businesses like ours help.  At Silver  Beacon, the program runs on 6 different computers.  Our two year anniversary in the program is in a few days.  During that time, we’ve given 2.3 years of computing time to these science projects.

Imagine that—just over one day of free computing time for these projects for every day of elapsed time.  Estimates vary, but a nice round number is that there are maybe 30 million small businesses in the US.  Imagine what would happen if only 1% participated at this level and donated 300,000 days of annual computer time.

Imagine how the world would change with 821 extra hours of computer time given to the scientists working to improve our health and our environment.  Sometimes science produces Tang.  Sometimes science produce a polio vaccine.

Download the BIONIC program from the World Community Grid today.

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Google’s Online Hard Drive Adds Search

State of the art... for Mad Men

If you’re using Google’s document feature, you already have access to full-featured spreadsheet, word processing and forms-based software.  For months, you’ve been able to attach tags to files created by each, automatically convert documents temporarily or permanently, and share them on a document-by-document basis.   My favorite part has long been the ability to have a complete audit trail of any changes made to any document.

Now Google has added… search.

Yes, I know you’re yawning, but Google’s new document search is far different from anything you’ll find on a PC.  Now you can search your email and your Google documents for a phrase.

Say what you will about Google, but the company knows how to search stuff.

This is a tweak, but it’s an important tweak.  Your takeaway as a small business is that you can create online versions of any popular office suite application that is at least full featured as Microsoft Office. And maybe most important, you can upload existing documents from your hard drive to your Google account.  Now your backup is tied to your Google account rather than the server in your closet or a pay service somewhere.

If your client or the other person doesn’t want to use Google’s applications, save your file as a PDF and send it to them that way.   But every client I’ve worked with for the last 18 months has started the ROI model with us in Google docs, and this process just plain works.

The IT crowd has told us since at least 1980 that the single biggest point of failure for a computer is the mechanical drive.  Google applications remove that layer of failure and allow sharing.  Privacy watchdogs continue hounding the company to ensure your data is not inappropriately used.

This is a win-win.  If you’re not using Google documents now, give it a try.  If you are and want to try the new feature, it’s located in the LABS section of Gmail.

Photo:  ronnieb51

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