Did you hear about the earthquake in England earlier this week? Yes, an earthquake in England.

The first thing I do when I hear abou the earth starting to rumble is to check the U.S. Geological Survey's online Earthquake Center.

You're greeted by two maps illustrating all the most recent quakes around the world and in the United States (Whew! Nothing showing in Texas!).

These are all pretty basic Web pages — there's no video, and just a bit of animation (maps that can help you spot patterns). But there's a method to that madness: In an emergency, access to this site is at a premium, and so efforts are made to trim the fat from each page to reduce the number of bytes needed to display it.

The home page of the USGS site has a convenient list of the latest significant quakes in the left column; that made it easy to zero in on information related to the 4.7 magnitude British incident on Feb. 27.

In addition to specific details about where the earthquake is centered (and how deep it is), there are detailed maps that pinpoint the location.

There is also an interactive element: The USGS accepts reports from the public who have felt an earthquake. When we checked a few hours after the British quake, more than 8,600 dispatches had been filed from across England, most falling classifying the tremor as "light" or "moderate." Unscientific, sure, but fascinating nonetheless.

As far as Texas is concerned, I found accounts of just two minor quakes in the past year... Most recently a 3.1 magnitude tremor between Lubbock and Abilene on January 29; and a 2.7 magnitude event last September near College Station.

Just for the record, the big one in the Lone Star State was way back in 1931: A 5.1 magnitude powerhouse near Valentine, Texas, which saw all buildings except wood-frame houses suffering severe damage..

This looks interesting...

Chumby Industries

You'll probably want to turn chumby's screen towards the bed when using it as an alarm clock.

We all remember how Apple's iPod changed the way most people listen to music. Now there's a new gizmo that could help establish another entirely new category: the amorphous Internet appliance.

It's called chumby . Its plastic case (in basic black, latte or pearl) features "Italian leather" inserts. It's about 5 inches wide and features a 3.5-inch color LCD touchscreen.

Priced at $179, it's a little expensive to be a multi-function alarm clock, which is one of its primary functions. But there's so much more!

The chumby has a built-in wireless Wi-Fi connection and is designed to become a part of your home network. That means it can reach out to the Internet for news, photos, even thousands of streaming radio stations. Want to wake up to a sports-talk radio station in Philadelphia? No problem!

Have you seen those $100 digital photo frames? For about $80 more, you get a much more robust device that can also play MP3 music files.

Additional functions are accessed through "widgets," small programs that manage the connection, the contents, the display and real-time updates.

I've asked the chumby folks to send me one so to test; I'll keep you posted.

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