EarthBuzz

EarthBuzz is a symbol of sustainability and the environment and was created to represent the idea that everyone can make a difference in protecting the planet. It can be used in initiatives to promote green living and sustainability.

EarthBuzz Weather

EarthBuzz Limited is a mobile app company that developed and marketed the EarthBuzz Weather app from 2010-2015. Unfortunately the application was withdrawn from the iTunes App Store due to unforseen circumstances. This website provides some historical context regarding the EarthBuzz app.

EarthBuzz Weather was one of the highest rated but also most obscure weather apps on the iTunes App Store and was unique in that it blended a 3D earth with social networking data and real-time animated satellite clouds, current weather conditions, weather forecasts and geological events. The app was written in C++ targeting OpenGLES and featured smooth and precise quaternion-based navigation and animation between favorite geographical locations.

Screenshot of the EarthBuzz app showing North America with current conditions

The EarthBuzz app embedded NASA's Blue Marble imagery overlaid with real-time animated satellite clouds downloaded over the network plus shape layers with earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes and current conditions for airfield weather stations. Blue Marble: Next Generation was produced by Reto Stöckli, NASA Earth Observatory.

Screenshot of the EarthBuzz app showing 7-Day Accumulated Snowfall

The EarthBuzz global image layers included: animated satellite imagery, estimated precipitation, cloud cover, daily rainfall, 7-day accumulated snowfall, ice, relative humidity, min/max/mean temperatures, avg/max windspeed, storm potential (convective available potential energy), heating/cooling degree days, and soil moisture, as well as shape layers for hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes and observations. Weather data was provided by CustomWeather, Inc.

Blue Marble Next Generation tesselated octahedron projection tile outlines

The EarthBuzz app used the tessellated octahedron projection with recursive subdivision for tiled map layers. The tessellated octahedron is a novel projection with excellent texture linearity compared to equirectangular or mercator projections, and it naturally tiles for deep zoom due to the recursive square embedding. The figure shows a tessellated octahedron that has been recusively subdivided to the first level.

Visualization showing mapping from a 3D tesselated octahedron to 2D tiles

The EarthBuzz app included a native mobile application for iOS/android plus web services infrastructure to fetch, transcode and cache satellite imagery, and to fetch and transcode weather condition data. The app supported asynchronous request batching for accelerated loading during pan and zoom of current condition data for thousands of geographically distributed weather stations.

EarthBuzz Weather High Level Application Architecture

EarthBuzz Limited will assist with proposals related to global geospatial events, web services, and cross-platform mobile application development for iOS and android. Please contact us for more information.

Copyright 2023 EarthBuzz Limited, @earthbuzz