The Best of Both Phone, and Tablet
CNET Editors' review
We've used plenty of weather-watching programs, but none quite like Earth Alerts from South Wind Technologies. This disaster-watching program monitors online information related to severe, extreme, and violent weather and natural disasters in near real time, notifies you about alerts and updates, displays satellite data and imagery, and even lets you view the event in images and video.
Earth Alerts has an attractive, colorful display that is quite easy to get started with. We first added our own location by clicking New Location and entering our ZIP code in the Search tool. Earth Alerts populated the relevant information fields automatically and displayed our location in the Locations box on the left-hand navigation and control panel. This panel offers three basic configurable overviews--Global, United States, and our locality--and several categories of events for regular monitoring: earthquakes, tsunamis, tropical cyclones (hurricanes), volcanoes, landslides, wildland fires, and severe weather. We clicked Update Now, and the program fetched the latest bulletins about a tsunami in Indonesia, a volcano in Russia, an update on Mt. Kilauea in Hawaii, two cyclone alerts, an NOAA tornado watch in Georgia, and other events, most of which also displayed maps and radar, and even opened a view in Google Earth when we clicked the buttons atop the main view. There were five earthquake alerts for our locality, all of them related to tremors 416 miles away, the nearest activity. We selected a volcano alert, clicked Images, and were rewarded with pictures of the volcano site. The automatic update, Google Earth launcher, and sound and e-mail notification settings were all clearly explained and easy to configure.
We're impressed by Earth Alerts and its ability to deliver useful, up-to-the-minute data and images of a wide range of global phenomena. It's easy to add any place on Earth to its Locations to monitor, and there's plenty to see and do with it, even when all's quiet on the weather front.
Publisher's Description
From South Wind Technologies:
Earth Alerts is a Windows-based application that allows you to monitor in near real-time a variety of natural hazard events that are occurring anywhere around the world. Alert notifications, reports, and imagery provide the user with a convenient way to view natural phenomenon as they occur, whether close to home or some far-flung corner of the globe.Earth Alerts includes basic weather tracking features such as National Weather Service alerts, current conditions, local forecasts and radar or satellite imagery.
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All versions:
3.6 starsout of 84 votes
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Current version:
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"World weather easy to access in one place."
Version: Earth Alerts 2012.1.12
Pros
Great place to find what is happening on the rest of the planet!
Cons
Can't think of any that matter.
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"very handy quick-glance for possible emergencies."
Version: Earth Alerts 2012.1.8
Pros
I do not find it intrusive, once set up, but it still lets me know when there is something happening that I may be interested in.
Cons
I found it a little complicated to get set up the way I wanted, but not impossibly so.
Summary
All in all, this is a very useful app to use alongside something such as Weatherbug.
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"I like what it does, but it's a bit tricky to use."
Version: Earth Alerts 2012.1.8
Pros
This program appears very comprehensive, at least in the short time I have had it installed. I like the availability of worldwide alerts and warnings, with pictures and maps of those locations. Local forecasts and current status are also quite extensive. The amount and variety of data this program gathers and displays is staggering.
Cons
Like Joe2496, I thought the program was tricky to configure, and the interface difficult to navigate, or at least to determine what to click. I'm also not crazy about the alert window that pops up regularly. Maybe I need to configure it to do so less often and opt out of some world alerts, if possible.
A big aggravation was the System Tray icon. Windows 7 defaults new icons to the Hidden Icon Window, and the EA icon landed there as expected. As long as the mouse pointer hovered over this icon, an alert window remained visible, but I could not open the main window because the alert window disappeared with any mouse movement. I finally realized I needed to specify "Show icon and notifications" via the Control Panel. This should be the default.
I also think the main window is too busy and somewhat disorganized. Even requiring more clicks could clean it up dramatically, while providing the same amount of data.Summary
As I become more familiar with Earth Alerts, it seems to grow on me. However, I am still not convinced I will keep it installed. It may in fact provide too much information for busy people to sort through, and probably will grab valuable processor resources and network bandwidth during its frequent updates. That's why I give it only 2.5 stars.
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"Interesting info not in most other weather software"
Version: Earth Alerts 2012.1.4
Pros
There are (like the title says) a lot of features in this program not available in other competing programs (I have used Weather Channel Desktop, weather bug, Accu weather, etc.). See download description for specifics.
Cons
The installation is a little tricky and the interface, at times, equally difficult to navigate. In my opinion, there is too much info in one place and not enough organization. If the developers streamlined the program a bit, all would be good.
Summary
This is very nice software with relevant information you may not be able to get in other weather programs. I recommend installing to those who live near active volcanoes, fault lines, giant muddy hills, or any other random hazards.
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"gettign warnigna a head of time"
Version: Earth Alerts 2011.2.30
Pros
detailed events before they are about to happen with enough time to pack up and yet away to safety now that is worthwhile
Cons
older post sometimes won't bring up on an event one is following
Summary
well worth having as they are activily making software changes to improve the proformance regularly thank you for a job well done
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"Interesting information, but frequent popups are a pain"
Version: Earth Alerts 2011.2.30
Pros
Interesting information
Cons
Frequent pop-ups are a paid and interfere with working on the computer. They need an option to specify pop up timing.
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"Up to date"
Version: Earth Alerts 2011.2.2
Pros
one fo the best world watch programs I have seen in a long time faster reporting than the evening news without the gloom and doom reports comments.
Cons
localization of a persons time zone is too generialize if you just want whats happening around your 50 zone radious.
doesn't give travel delays eg grounded aircarft or harboured ships.Summary
with this program you have no need to watch the evening news the world events are current and not hours behind the event, well worth having if you like fishing sports or just keeping and eye on the watch.
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"Very interesting, was good to see what , where , when."
Version: Earth Alerts 2011.2
Pros
Got the information before the news put out...
Cons
always popping up in corner..take time for it to get started at the open of the net...
Summary
Not worth the effort...will go on line a ask about a certain area instead..to time consuming.
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"Would not run"
Version: Earth Alerts 2011.2
Pros
None. Maybe if it ran.
Cons
No matter how I tried , it would not run !!
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"The final answer to the question, "What's goiing on?""
Version: Earth Alerts 2011.1.158
Pros
If you have burning desire to know what's going on in the world; rain, snow, earthquakes, landslides, drought, pestilence and disaster, then this is da place.
Cons
Sometimes some of the elements won't connect with their knowledge base but the number of times it does is amazing.
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