I wanted to see earthquakes the way they actually happen: as points lighting up on a spinning planet, in near real time. That became Earthquake: Live Seismic Monitor, an iOS app that renders a 3D globe of recent quakes straight from the USGS feed. No backend of my own - just the public data and the device. Here's how it comes together.
The data source
The USGS publishes earthquake data as GeoJSON feeds, updated continuously, at several time/magnitude cutoffs (past hour, past day, 2.5+, 4.5+, etc). Each feature has coordinates, magnitude, depth and time. That's everything you need to place a quake on a globe - no custom API required.
The app polls the appropriate feed, diffs against what it already has, and updates the scene. Because USGS does the heavy lifting, the whole thing is effectively serverless from my side.
Putting quakes on a globe
