I haven't kept up with the thread so I don't know if this has been talked about but it's pretty cool either way.
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/sah_participate.php
It's a project by SETI. You download the program and you can run it as a screen saver or just in the background while you do other stuff and it analyzes noise from space looking for alien signals. It automatically transmits results back to SETI. While reading up on it they said they've only mapped out/listened to approximately 2% of space this way with over 2 million people looking over the last 7 or so years. Has anyone done this?