Xearth...

[ffutures]

is a nice little Windows program that puts a globe of the earth or an orthographic map onto the desktop, updates it as often as you like (showing day/night etc in real time), and plots the most recent earthquakes on it, getting data on-line, again as often as you like. The amazing thing about it is that it does all this in less than 200k! Oh, and it's free and isn't adware or spyware.

http://www.hewgill.com/xearth/

I think there's also a Linux version, but I've only experience of the Windows implementation.

Comments

Ahem ...

[autopope.livejournal.com]

The big honking X prefix should give it away -- this is a port of the UNIX/X11 program Xearth to Windows. It's been around on UNIX-type systems since the late eighties. The earthqake plotting is a new feature to me, but I've seen traceroute versions (designate a host and its ICBM coordinates and the program will show you the physical route your packets take to it) before now.

Re: Ahem ...

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Thanks - I should have explained that it was a port although I thought it was from Linux, not Unix.