Interfacing with the internal accelerometers?

[benz]

Recently, I came across these developments for the MacBook Pro:

http://slappingturtle.com/wordpress/?p=12
http://pallit.lhi.is/palli/dashlevel/

These interesting and potentially feature-extending applets utilize the new MacBook's built-in accelerometer, much like that of Thinkpads for years.

I know that in most Thinkpads (or is it just the T-series?) that the "hard drive airbag" feature is simply the implementation of (two?) accelerometer(s) on the motherboard, that sense non-constant accelerations and subsequently park the drive heads. Since the Active Protection applet can display a real-time picture of the rotation of the Thinkpad in space, I was wondering if anyone has been able to get data from these accelerometers?