No, this is nothing to do with computer games. Accelerometers in laptops and other devices have been catching on, doing a variety of things – from safety (shutting down the hard drive if your device falls off a table) – to just pure fun (in game controllers, or even on your mobile phone). Five cool things you can do with an accelerometer lists more ideas for what you can do with them.

However sometimes the nicest ideas are ones we never thought of in the first place, such as this one reported by the BBC:

A device originally put into laptops to prevent damage to the hard drive if the machine is dropped has been put to a novel use by scientists.

The tiny devices that detect unexpected movement are being used to give warnings on earthquakes.

The Quakecatcher Network has been built by combining the readings of sensors in laptops known as accelerometers.

I think this is a really good idea, especially as so many parts of the world are susceptible to earthquakes – just the other day, there was one in California in which thankfully no-one was badly hurt, which the network picked up. The system is still in its infancy, and the accelerometers are only powerful enough to pick up quakes as they are happening – but this still might give a few seconds’ vital notice to help warn people.

By combining the abilities of lots of computers over a wide area (what’s known as distributed computing), it’s using the power of the network – just like other projects like SETI@home, which is searching for extraterrestrial life, and Folding@home, which works out how proteins fold and is pioneering research into diseases such as Alzheimer’s and cancer. Wikipedia has a great list of all the different kinds – the key being they do stuff in the background, taking advantage of the uses of the technology without getting in your way.

So far they are mainly limited to computers – laptops and desktops – but given nearly all of us have mobiles and many of us have portable music players and other hand-helds, how long before a bright spark somewhere comes up with an idea for using their capabilities for the better of humankind as well?