Your laptop can detect an earthquake

Yikes!

If you drop your laptop computer, a chip built into it will sense the acceleration and protect the delicate moving parts of its hard disk before it hits the ground. Researchers are putting the chip to work detecting earthquakes with a network of volunteer laptops that can map out quakes in far greater detail than traditional seismometers.

I can't determine whether smart phones can be used on this particular network, the Quake-Catcher Network. But I found this one: the iShake Project.

With the Quake-Catcher program, a laptop monitors local activity and only alerts the network for strong new signals. If the network's central server receives a bunch of these all at once, then it is likely that an earthquake is happening. If the server receives a notification from only one laptop, it knows the laptop was shaken by something smaller and more local (like your sister running by, or the door slamming).

You can check all of this out, and sign up, here.