(This is a cabon copy of my post to sci.physics.research)
I attended a conference "Statistical Physics of Disordered Systems and its Applications". (http://www.stat.phys.titech.ac.jp/SPDSA/)
Various kind of interesting applications of statistical physics to information technology, such as cryptography, compression, error correction, network connectivity, were presented. However, the most interesting application (for me) was a board game which is based on the sand-pile model of self-organized criticality, presented at the banquet: http://theorie.physik.uni-wuerzburg.de/~kinzel/disx.html
You can play its online version on the above site. The rule is exactly the same as the 2D sand-pile model. The larger avalanche you trigger, the more points you get.
