This month's featured site is submitted by Wayne Wilson. He writes, "Many people think that the SETI (Search for Intelligent Life) is the stuff of science fiction. Actually, it is a serious effort that you can support with no pain and virtually no cost. The University of California at Berkley sponsors one of the largest distributed computing projects in the world. Here's how it works: the university receives data collected by the giant radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico and sends out 'units' to millions of desktop computers world wide. These computers, instead of flying toasters or cruising fish for screensavers, run a number of scientific processes against the data looking for signs of intelligence in the radio signals. Once the analysis of the unit is complete, the results are returned to Berkley and another unit downloaded for analysis. Each unit will take between 2 and 36 hours to crunch depending on the power of the PC and options the user selects. If you like the 'screensaver' display, it takes longer; turn to black screen and the units process faster. Have a powerful machine and want to get through a lot of units? There are command line and Windows services options to run SETI@home. But it doesn't have to be complicated."

It is fun and you are contributing otherwise idle computer cycles to a good cause!

Check out SETI@Home here.

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