The first and only volunteer grid computing platform built in Adobe Flash 9.

The project began as a research project to determine the possibilities of distributing work over a web browser is either AJAX and/or Adobe Flash. The project, which began in early 2006 and released in early 2008, is run entirely on the web browser without any additional download (besides Adobe Flash) or registration.

According to Google. Grid computing (or the use of a computational grid) is applying the resources of many computers in a network to a single problem at the same time.

Basically, it's the concept of dividing up work. A Grid divides up large problems to multiple computers from all over the world.

Grids offer a way to solve Grand Challenge problems like protein folding, financial modeling, earthquake simulation, and climate/weather modeling. [From wiki article].

Current grid computing projects are trying to solve these and other large computational problems. For example, Folding@home, the largest computing grid in the world at over 1200 teraflops, uses thousands of personal computers (who've downloaded a small client program) to simulate and predict protein folding.

Accurate simulations of protein folding and misfolding enable the scientific community to better understand the development of many diseases, including sickle-cell disease (drepanocytosis), Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, BSE (mad cow disease), cancer, Huntington's disease, cystic fibrosis, osteogenesis imperfecta, alpha 1-antitrypsin deficiency, and other aggregation-related diseases. [From wiki article].

This is one of the problems with current grid computing projects. Most Internet users (especially those outside the Technology realm) have never heard of grid computing nor would ever consider joining such projects. These projects always require users to download software and register on a website. With all the viruses floating around the net today, it's hard to convince an ordinary, periodic internet user to download and install software.

Current grid computing projects almost always require the client to register and give away their email address. How much spam do you get everyday? So many internet users stay away from registering and giving away personal information to websites.

The Online Community Grid is built with Flash and Actionscript 3. This means that as long as a user has Flash 9 installed, that users can join the computing grid. According to internet statistics, around 95+% of users already have Flash installed [Survey]. No registeration, no downloads, no sweat.

On the bottom of this page you should see the application widget running. Click on the Status tab and then click Join the grid

If you'd like to keep the application open on a separate window you can click here.

Only one instance of the widget can run at once. This is done to help the server distinguish users.

While, Flash 9 has comparable speed to Java [oddhammer article], Flash is significantly slower than most standalone applications. However, due to Flash being so easily accessible, the Online Community Grid can obtain clients more easily than standalone applications that require registration and download. With the advent of social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, the Online Community Grid has a very viable market of distribution.

Plus, the Online Community Grid is a great way to advertise standalone grid computing applications.

Whenever you visit a webpage, you automatically begin to process data. Whether the process is rendering images, loading a Flash game, listening to mp3s, or just displaying text, your computer processes data whenever a page loads.

Regardless of that fact, the Online Community Grid application displays on websites as a widget. The application shows up as a small box and has multiple options. The two main navigational tabs of the application is an RSS feed tab and a Status tab (where you can toggle joining on and off the grid).By default, the Online Community Grid application is turned OFF. However, once (or if) you decide to join the grid, the application will remember your decision and automatically join the next time the application is loaded. The same happens when you leave the grid.

The Online Community Grid application has the capacity to save results. Every few seconds the work done is saved as a checkpoint. When you visit another page with the application, work will resume where previously left off. Of course, this functionality is up to the developer of the grid application and not the framework.

Plus, as mentioned earlier, you can still load the widget on a separate window or tab by clicking here.

You sure can. Just copy the code on the right side of the page. In the future, as soon as someone joins the Online Community Grid from your site, your website will gain "points". For more information click visit the webmasters section of the site.

While a job queuing, such as ones formed on internal grid networks and supercomputers, would be unique and potentially beneficial for scientists, allowing users to select their own projects is a much more efficient and beneficial system.

In an arguably Capitalist v.s. Communist debate, the Capitalist ideology works better in volunteer grid computing. Just like in a Communist structure, job queuing works well when there is much overhead and analysis of submitted jobs.

However, the OCG is not built to be a multi-purpose grid computing platform. Allowing users to select which scientific project to join encourages competition. The OCG makes the assumption that users are generally smart. Users value their computing power and prefer to donate their computing power to causes they personally believe are important. It's up to the scientists and developers to convince users that their project to join their project, and it is this force that makes projects better. Without competition and choice, the OCG will not succeed.

Nevertheless, a paradoxical way of proving this philosophy wrong would be for a scientist to develop a project on the OCG that actually does multi-purpose experiments by randomly giving different jobs to different clients.

Firstly, Flash is installed on more machines than any other plug in, web browser, or operating system. Allowing users to join your science project without having to register, download, or install greatly reduces the barrier to entry.

Additionally, the OCG is not meant as a replacement to existing standalone frameworks (like BOINC or World Community Grid) but moreover as an extended computational and advertising platform.

For example, let's say you have a standalone application and also an OCG port. Your OCG application can say a message such as

"Hi there! As you read this message you are contributing computer power to our project. If you would like to help out even more, then click
here to download are standalone"

One of the most difficult obstacles for new volunteer grid computing projects is advertisement. Many projects have thousands of work packets and only a few hundred members. Because the OCG will be on Facebook, MySpace, and around the web, there is a greater chance for more users to join your project.

At the very least, the OCG raises awareness of your project and grid computing in general to a large amount of Internet users.

Forums are available as well as a contact form.