Visualization candy: the making of a realtime geo-dashboard

Check out maptail (https://github.com/stagas/maptail) for a node.js implementation that tails logs

This is a much better visualization of the earthquake data than the static image on the USGS website. Really cool usage of google maps. I wonder if it could do a worldwide map, there probably are a lot more earthquakes in the rest of the world!

The GeoRSS feed from USGS makes doing simple apps showing recent earthquakes pretty simple. Here's one I did a year or so ago: http://swingley.appspot.com/maps/eq

USGS GeoRSS feed: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/catalogs/7day-M5.xml

If you zoom out on the example you'll see it already shows the entire Earth.

http://thumbtack.github.com/rotarymaps/ (mouse wheel zoom)

I've found Polymaps (polymaps.org) to also be great for making realtime geo-dashboards. Combined with CloudMade for map tiles, you can customize the look and feel very easily.