Has anybody ever considered the idea of doing otherwise-useful CPU work with the power currently expended by computing hashes in Bitcoin mining? The most obvious application would be weather forecasting: It could use a huge amount of computation, on a continuously ongoing basis, and is valuable to every nation on earth. Whether it can be lasso'ed into a bitcoin-mining engine, I don't know.
Jim Bell

Just to answer this directly, yes, a lot of people have had such ideas. Many have likely been implemented in altchains.

I have software development experience and I would assist a project using permanent storage and serving of arbitrary community data as its proof of work. Such a chain could also offer anonymous behavior.