University students are working on apps that could change the way you use your phone, creating an accelerometer-app that lets you write in the air and send the results to a file or e-mail address.  It might be fiddly with thin hardware like the iPhone, but candy-bar designs like Nokia’s should be perfect pen-pretenders.

The system detects your movement and turns it into letters or diagrams – while unsuitable for long messages, it’ll be awesome for quickly jotting notes after taking a picture (instead of busting out the buttons).  It’s only at the research stages so far, and is still quite limited, but an idea this good just needs to be had and seen to succeed – it’s too cool not to work out the details now.