June 21, 2005
Earthquakes On A Google Map
New site I created: Los Angeles Earthquakes on a Google Map.
There is also the Last 20 National Earthquakes on a Google Map which, at least lately, looks just like the L.A. one since that’s where most earthquakes are. 
The pushpins are color-coded based on the magnitude from “cool” colors (blue) to “hot” colors (red).
Your comments/criticisms, as always, are welcome.
(1 votes, average: 1 out of 5)
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Ask Bjørn Hansen said,
June 21, 2005 @ 9:42 pm
Neat! When will you help me make a GeoURL Google Map? It’d be neat to have it in a small window on the page (instead of the full page stuff).
emad said,
June 22, 2005 @ 8:13 am
Check your email, Ask.
Joe Murphy said,
June 22, 2005 @ 11:44 am
Hi Emad, that’s cool you did that — I only see dark blue pushpins though.
emad said,
June 22, 2005 @ 12:38 pm
Thanks, Joe. The map shows the last 20 earthquakes by default and they all happen to be with the 1.x-2.x range. If you click on this link you’ll see all US earthquakes with a magnitude 3 or more.
You can hack the URL by adding rpp=<number> where “number” represents the maximum number of earthquakes to graph. If you set the value to zero (rpp=0), there will be no limits and it will grab all earthquakes currently listed at the USGS…but you have been warned: grabbing all of them or setting a high number may mean you could be waiting a while because they have a lot of them listed! My point in bringing up the rpp hack is that, by requesting more, you could grab additional earthquakes that could be of varying magnitudes and will start showing yellow and red pushpins.
Also, just as a note…the earthquakes listed are listed in reverse chronological order (the latest earthquakes) so when I talk about using the rpp hack, by default, you are seeing the last 20 earthquakes that had occurred.
Michael said,
June 23, 2005 @ 8:46 pm
This is rad. You should jam in a header that explains what it is when people go directly to the URL and not through your blog. Also you might want to consider onMouseOver instead of OnClick for the earthquake info. But like I said…it’s rad. Can you also do a version of this that accepts YP data and cross-references it with other stats? Like, it would be cool to do “Earthquakes” and “Carl’s Jr.” or, if you wanted to get serious, “crime stats” mixed with “bars” or “casinos.”
Michael said,
June 23, 2005 @ 8:47 pm
You know it might also be cool to code the push-pins by time as well….so you can easily tell which were the most recent quakes in a given area.
emad said,
June 23, 2005 @ 9:32 pm
Thanks for the input, Mike.
To answer your 1st question, I could easily jam up YP (or any type of data) on the map and overlay them…very easily done. In fact, MSN is planning a July launch that includes that idea. I might be creating MSN maps hacks shortly
I was thinking about somehow highlighting just the latest quakes (that’s why I created the rpp param (see previous comment) but I was having a hard time figuring out the UI. The only thing that seemed “less confusing” was color-coding the push-pins by either time or magnitude…but not both. I welcome everyones ideas.
I put the map up on the front page to make the map/data easily accessible…but I agree with you that I should create an explanation somewhere…so I added a “What the heck is this?!?” links.
Feel free to pass along any ideas…I may put it together (and of course you’ll get attribution on the front page of it
Emad Fanous » Blog Archive » YP Listings on a Google Map said,
June 25, 2005 @ 12:45 pm
[…] r hear of Theo Jansen? YP Listings on a Google Map Well, Michael asked for it. So, to prove my point, I went ahead and put it together. Please forgive the UI (I not […]
emad said,
June 30, 2005 @ 9:07 am
I’ve modified the icons…the colors still correspond to the magnitudes but now the icons appear as targets and are different sizes based on magnitude.
emad said,
June 30, 2005 @ 4:18 pm
Yahoo maps version now available!