23
04
2008
Scientists Want to Turn Your MacBook Into a Seismometer
Posted by: Wm D in Geek, Pop Culture, Science, TechWith scientists now saying there's a 99 percent chance "the big one" will finally hit California sometime during the next 30 years, seismologists are scrambling to come up with new ways to detect and analyze quakes as soon as they happen.
One team of researchers is now hoping to employ the distributed computing approach to detection and create a giant, low-cost tremor-sensing network that takes advantage of the motion sensors that may already be in your laptop.
See: http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/04/your-laptop-may.html
What they need now is to start giving the option for a motion sensor added into the desktop. I would think the statistical advantage of it in a desktop which never moves is much better than in a laptop which would not necessarily be in the same place all the time, and could give false positives because of its mobility.