How to "measure" vibration
My boss has an iPhone and he recently downloaded a seismograph application for it. You can put the iPhone down on a flat surface (like a table) and then tap around it and it will measure the vibrations and produce a graph. When he showed it to me I thought "That's neat, but what the heck would you ever NEED it for?!?!". Now I know. You could use it to measure the vibrations produced by your power tools. We could use these objective measurements to solve long-standing arguments about the virtues of link belts in reducing vibration, prove the value of dressing grinder wheels, and all other manner of machine vibration connundrums.
Of course, this will only work if you have an iPhone, and I don't, so I'll have to leave it to some other woodworker to see if my crackpot idea actually has any merit... :D
(Although, I do have several friends with iPhones. Maybe they would be willing to help me experiment. But convincing them to place delicate and expensive electronics on top of my woodworking equipment might be a hard sell. Hmm....)
** edit **
link to iPhone app I am talking about: http://coneri.se/iphone