My girlfriend just called me because she was woken up by “something that shook the whole house.”

She surmised that it was an earthquake, but had no way to verify it. Remember the days before the Internet when you had to see if your local news (BTW, I beat all the news stations to the punch. Think bloggers don’t matter?) had something about it or you had to ask the people at work the next day if they felt something?

In a few minutes, I was on the USGS website and I found the culprit. A 3.3 earthquake about 12 miles from her.

The detail of the information is down right astonishing.

Not only do you get accurate information about the quake itself, but you get tons of maps as well (and they seem to be adding maps as time goes on).

One map reveals that 20 minutes after the quake 467 people have reported the intensity of it to the USGS website.

Damned impressive for a government outfit.