This may be a little off topic for a music education site, but since so many music educators also are avid Macintosh fanatics I thought it might be fun to post it anyway.  Considering the recent Illinois earthquake it seems a little timely to show how people with a mac computer can now help to analyze the jolts from the next big earthquake.

A new collaborative computing project has a way for you to put your properly equipped Mac laptop into a seismograph to help measure and record the next big earthquake.  The Quake Catcher Network is releasing special collaborative computer software that will turn any mac with an accelerometer built into it into a portable seismograph.  When an earthquake is detected (it is apparently able to tell the difference between a little bump and the Big One) the data is sent out to the QC Network for analysis.  So Mac users unite for science!  Don't get too full of yourselves though, a PC version and a possible Wii version are also in the works for the future.  For the full story on this skip over to Wired Magazine's story about it.