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Yes, our logo is a pink and yellow flame. This is why:

Blog - August 19, 2013 by Mark McA

Charity Engine started long before Charity Engine started. In other words; researching how to create it, partnering with the charities, legal work and due diligence took the best part of two years before the website even existed.

 

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Why we quit Facebook - the full story

Blog - August 10, 2013 by Mark McA

In January 2010 we set up a Facebook fan page for Charity Engine, our free PC app that constantly earns money for top charities – and cash prizes for the users – all thanks to spare computing time that otherwise goes to waste. The app was still a long way from being released but, as Facebook had recently introduced vanity URLs, we figured we'd better grab www.facebook.com/charityengine while we could. Bad idea...

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The biggest computer on Earth

Blog - April 12, 2013 by Mark McA

Think the Internet is big? It's beyond big. There are now at least two billion PCs, a billion cellphones plus 4-5 billion servers, consoles, tablets, smart TVs and embedded devices all joined together by enough cable to reach to the Moon and back 1000 times over. There are more devices on the Internet than there are people on Earth.

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Towards zero-carbon computing

Blog - March 11, 2013 by Mark McA

Supercomputers and data-centres have two problems that aren't going away: energy and heat. The largest facilities cost billions of dollars and consume megawatts of electricity, enough to power small towns. Not only are more built every year, they're also getting bigger.

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From sci-fi to start-up: the origin of Charity Engine

Blog - March 8, 2013 by Mark McA

Many years ago, I started writing a couple of sci-fi novels. One of them was called Off-camera, a story about the near-future in which everything (and I mean everything) is recorded. In that story, a company called DownTime becomes a huge multinational from harnessing - you guessed it - the downtime of billions of home computers.

(Strictly speaking, it was badly named. Downtime means switched off. But hey, the 'IdleTime Corporation' sounded worse...)

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