The Project
I love Google products! Again, I am a huge fan of Google products, so I decided to explore the APIs and tools which Google offers.
Google Maps API is a framework which allows you to use Google’s Maps in your own site, overlaying your own content onto the map. I wanted to create a map for a long time, but I didn’t have any ideas for what I could overlay.
The Solution
When I was younger, I wanted to be a seismologist. I think this originated from the Pierce Brosnan movie, “Dante’s Peak”. Recently, my wife and I watched this film and it was not as factual as I once believed. Perhaps the best part of the movie, was when Brosnan, a volcanologist, is in the truck with the town’s mayor. She is driving and approaches a river of lava. She asks, “Do you think it’s safe to drive over it?” Brosnan says, “I don’t know!” Wow!
With that background, I think it’s understandable that I wanted to track earthquakes! Although this project isn’t finished, I think it is fun to open it and see where the earth is quaking. This page uses jQuery and pulls an XML feed for earthquakes between M2 and M5 from usgs.gov, which is updated regularly. That means what you see is always up-to-date!
The Link: Quake Tracker