Right now, my computer is really busy working on my behalf. It’s helping me to check my GMail, monitor what my friends and acquaintances (and Henry Rollins) are doing via Twitter, making sure there are no more tickets in the ticket queue, aiding my monitoring of my servers, and helping me to complete structure-based drug discovery calculations required to identify promising drug leads to combat the related dengue, hepatitis C, West Nile, and Yellow fever viruses.

I know. You want me to run one of those parts by you again, right? What, you didn’t know Henry Rollins twittered? Come on, where have you been?

My little computer is a few years old, and I really don’t do much with it. I code, and code some more, and ssh in, and I browse, and that’s about it. What to do with all that excess computing power? Could I really make my computer into a force for good just by its mere existence?

Actually, I can, and so can you - by making it a part of the World Community Grid. The World Community Grid’s mission is to “create the largest public computing grid benefiting humanity. Our work is built on the belief that technological innovation combined with visionary scientific research and large-scale volunteerism can change our world for the better.”

Many people are familiar with the Seti@home project, which is a single distributed network dedicated to one goal - to search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Like the Seti@home project, the World Community Grid uses a distributed network of personal computers to bring a massive amount of computing power to projects that need a vast amount of computing power but who may not, for whatever reason (*cough* money *cough*) be able to afford access to the world’s supercomputers to gather the data and calculations that they need at a speed they could utilize it in. By joining the Grid, you allot a portion of your computing power, disk, and memory to one or all (the Grid’s choice) of the current following goals:

• Nutritious rice for the world
• Help conquer Cancer
• AfricanClimate@Home
• Discovering Dengue Drugs - Together
• Human Proteome Folding - Phase 2
• FightAIDS@Home

It literally takes only a few minutes to sign up - we were up and running in a very short amount of time, and as we chose to participate in all the programs, the first thing our computer got to do was participate in research for the Discovering Dengue Drugs - Together program. Help conquer Cancer is waiting to start.

We have created a DrakNet team (called, most appropriately, “DrakNet”). When you sign up - and you will sign up, won’t you? - simply click on teams and search for DrakNet, and click to join if you’d like to participate with us. Click to join and form a team to compete against us. Just click to join! Your computer has a deep seated desire (it’s run by a “mother” board after all) to be useful to and take good care of humanity, really!

World Community Grid supports users on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Check specific programs for specific requirements. We can tell you from a experiential standpoint, we did not notice any slowdown on our computer in the least bit - though we also have to disclose we are not gamers. After downloading the program, you can choose whether to run the program continuously, or run it only when you yourself are idle and the computer is not actively in use.

We will periodically post statistical updates to let folks know how much our team has accomplished, and the team’s open to anyone even remotely connected, so tell your friends, tell your family, and if your cat has a computer just for those icanhascheeseburger.com submissions, have your cat sign up, too! Follow this link to sign up and automatically be added to the DrakNet team. You can leave the team at any time.

We also wanted to let you know about another distributed computing project, the Folding@Home project. This project’s goal is understand protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases like Alzheimer’s, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes. The difference between World Community Grid and Folding@Home is that Folding@Home is devoted to one particular goal, while the World Community Grid lends itself to many diverse goals and is open to applications for its use for widely divergent research. If one of your motivations to participate is due to a loved one that was stricken with Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s or a disease that would be better served and honored by your participation in Folding@Home instead, we wanted to let you know about it.

Heck, if you have 3 computers in your house, you can have one looking for aliens, one looking to feed the world, and one looking to cure Parkinson’s all at the same time!

Who thought you could accomplish so much by getting off your computer and going to the park on a Sunday!

Wildlife Response, Inc. is a non-profit corporation in Chesapeake, Virgina dedicated to the preservation of wildlife through rehabilitation and education. They also happened to be hosted at DrakNet at no charge through our non-profit program.

Wildlife Response, Inc (WRI) is dedicated to the preservation of wildlife through rehabilitation and education. One of the most universal challenges today in the battle to save wild things and wild places is how to bond people to the physical world in a powerful enough way to give them the motivation to want to protect and preserve it. It is especially important in our growing suburban and urban communities to increase significant associations connecting people and nature, especially where natural environments and natural experiences are less and less common. On a local level, the steady arrival of new residents to the Hampton Roads area is having a overwhelming impact on our wildlife and natural environment. As we accommodate this progression, it is essential that people who now call the Hampton Roads area home understand the sensitive balance of human and non-human populations, the affect we have on the natural environment, and the best ways in which we can coexist.

DrakNet is proud to host this site at no cost so that the organization can put more money into aiding the animals (and educating the human animals).

It’s time to meet another one of the non-profits that your hosting fees support!

TAS is a Palos Verdes Art Center non-profit cooperative of more than 70 area artists in California who work together to show their artwork at one or both galleries. The gallery participates in many special PVAC events during the year and in May and November hosts a runway show of wearable art. They boast an ever-changing collection of fine art for home, gifts or office. Shop these galleries for ceramics, jewelry, sculpture, paintings and one-of-a-kind wearable art.

They have two galleries. The one located at PVAC shows a selection of work from all participating artists with the exhibitions changing monthly. The Avenue location showcases the work of three to four artists every six weeks, with group shows during the holidays, July and August. Every day a different artist staffs their galleries, and all of the members of the collective participate in some aspect of gallery operation.

DrakNet supports the collective with steeply discounted (80%) hosting - which means that you have invested in the arts! I bet you had no idea you were so cultural!

DrakNet’s made our third Kiva loan of the month!

We noticed that we were loaning almost exclusively to women so far (which, since this is a woman owned company isn’t exactly surprising), and we didn’t want to be sexist so we looked for a man from a new geographical area that we hadn’t loaned to yet.

For our last Kiva loan in April (we think) we chose Farhod Khomidov from Isfara, Tajikistan.

Farhod Khomidov is 27 years old. He is married with two kids.

Farhod provides taxi services with his vehicle. He has been in this business for five years. Farhod is a rather diligent and hard-working young man. He is ready to work from early morning until late at night in order to keep his customers and obtain new ones.

Now, Farhod’s car needs repair. That is why Farhod requests 600.00 US Dollars for a term of 12 months. Farhod has proven himself as a reliable client and promises to repay the loan in a timely manner. He thanks all who support him.

We chose Farhod because we’ve experienced the pain of car repairs (as well as the pain of having them cost more than you have to spend) and could sympathize greatly - and when we experienced it, our family’s life didn’t depend on the car working to make a living.

We’ve also had news on the first loan we made to Amela. Her loan has been disbursed to her and Zene za Zene International will begin posting updates to the site regarding how she’s doing.

So, we host a lot of groups at no charge. We also realize that some people could think that’s a marketing shtick (or, worse, a marketing shtick that’s not true designed to sell hosting accounts while just hosting one or two domains at no charge), so part of what we wanted to do with this blog was introduce you all to some of the organizations that we - meaning you - help support.

DrakNet’s roots as a company are in philanthropic endeavors - the company was started because I had a non-profit site, and I had a good deal on hosting. In 1996, I started reselling accounts to help defray the costs of the non-profit site, and in July of 1998 we had enough accounts that I thought it was a good idea to create a site just for them with information. Eventually, we had so many accounts that it made more sense to get a server, and eventually DrakNet migrated from a side endeavor to a full-fledged hosting company.

DrakNet’s roots, though, are still alive and well. We never forgot how we started, and over the past 11 years have remained committed to that first focus - supporting organizations with free services so that they can focus their raised money on helping.

The Ferret Aid Society was one of our very first non-profit sites hosted here at DrakNet at no charge.

Located in Mississauga, Ontario, The Ferret Aid Society is a ferret rescue organization run 100% on a volunteer basis. They have no paid employees - they do have a lot of cute ferrets that need homes, though, since they are a “no kill” shelter.

The Ferret Aid Society relies on the donations of animal lovers to keep them running, and we’re glad to do something to help out the fuzzies so that donated funds go to saving ferrets, and not paying hosting fees.

Stop by The Ferret Aid Society’s web site, and marvel at what good use your hosting fees have gone to (and make a donation while you’re there!)