You've heard of SETI@HOME I'm sure.  In one sense it has been a resounding success, on the other it has been a abject failure.  It has been the most successful grid computing effort on record so far and yet it has essentially stuck a fork in the chance of there being technologically advanced aliens.

People are now forced to hypothesize that a more advanced civilization will no longer use radio to communicate.  This seems somewhat far fetched to me because of the simplicity of using radio waves for said communication.

Current Grid Computing Projects

Anyways, here is a list [Grid Computing Projects] of other grid computing efforts you can participate in.

Currently this one might provide the most value: Malaria Control Project.  Which illustrates the problem of what do you do with all the data that you generate? [update]

If climate change floats your boat (it does NOT float mine) there is a distributed computing project for that: [linky]

Future Grid Computing Projects

The ones that look interesting me:

Artificial Intelligence System:  This one looks quite cool and is right up my alley.

This distributed computing project is part of a larger project that is reverse engineering the brain in order to build a large scale artificial intelligence system. The first of its kind. Because we are a very small company (i.e. 2 people) that is tackling an enormous challenge, we are asking the public at large to get involved by donating computer time. In order to be able to support and accelerate its development we will also pursue an alternative path, through commercialization.

Quake Catcher Network: And this one too.  This uses the accelerometers built into existing laptops as a distributed network for detecting earthquakes.  Flippin' cool!

If you have a MacBook, iBook, or Powerbook (purchased 2005 or later), you can join our beta testing laptop network. Click here to learn how.

You will soon be able to download free software to turn your Thinkpad and HP laptops into a seismometer.

This is an INPUT side to distributed computing.  Very, very cool!

Those are just a few ideas.  Take a look to see if any of the others interest you.  Participate if you wish.  It's a good use of unused cycles.