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**    Earthquake Monitor     **
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** What is it for:
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Earthquake monitor is a desktop strip which sits on the desktop and keep you up to date with the earthquake activity in California.


** Who can use it:
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Anybody can use it. But I think people who live in California and their family and friends (even if they live somewhere else) can also want
to be aware up to the minute on earth's movements on the area where they loved ones live.
I programed it for my own use because I live in California and I like to keep an eye in whats going on under my feet.


** What other features does it has:
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On the quake strip the program can display results for any of four zones. Los Angeles/Nevada, San Francisco, another somewhere in the middle of those two areas and Seattle area.
You can set how often you want the program to gather new results. aka. Refresh rate.
You can set whether you want the strip to show on the top area of the screen or to the bottom (close to the windows clock).
You can set a magnitud for which you want to receive a special alert. For example suppose you are interested in quakes of 3.5 or more. If some of those happen. A screen will pop up
and alert you of such event. In that case.  
Event Alert: When the event alert screen shows,  you can click over the magnitud display to read on the strip the whole information for that earthquake.

** How to work with it:
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Buttons: 
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The program has 4 buttons. 2 sit on the strip and the others appear when you press the first button to the right of the strip. That button is tagged "Expand to functions".
- Place the mouse arrow over the buttons to see each tag - 
The "Expand to functions" and "ON/OFF" button will automatically hide after a while if there is no activity. (I did this because for some reason that I don't know, the presence of the buttons 
bothered me a lot.)


The strip:
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Clicking on the text shown on the strip at any time the program will open the page where that earthquake was registered.
Every time the program refreshes the list, the latest event will be shown on the strip. You can also review previous quakes by pressing the "Expand to functions" button and pulling 
down the list box right bellow the strip (Tag: Recent Events).

     Fields: 
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Fields described are from Left to Right

Magnitud, Date, Local Time, Coordinates, Depth, Distance from Location, Location.

Note: Local time is the time taken from the event's local time zone. Convertion to your local time zone may be necessary if you are not on the same time zone.
Distance from location is shown in Km. and Miles.

Other functions:
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Bellow the "Recent Events" box is the "Area Select". Use the pulldown to select the zone from where you want the strip to gather events information.

Next to the "Area Select" is the "Refresh Rate" box. You can type there how often you want the program to gather new results. The data for those results will change only if there was
earth's activity since last refresh.

The following box next to the "Refresh Rate" box is the Magnitud field. Type there the minimum magnitud for which you want to be alerted. Magnituds are usually represented by an integer,
a comma and one decimal place. An Earthquake of about 3.5 of magnitud is something very perceptible and a 8.0 is catastrophic. I had mine set at 3.5. If at any time a 3.5 or over occur
a small screen will pop up and tell the magnitud that event was as it is reported by the server. In that case, you can click over the magnitud number and the strip will show a little more info
about that event.

Next to the "Magnitud" box is the "Maps" box. This pull down box has two options: "Recent World Wide" and "Strongest ones". As you can already have figured out from their names the first
will show a world wide map with the recent events and the second will show the latest strongest  quakes. To make it happen, press the "Show/Hide Maps" button.

To hide everything but the strip, press the "Show/Hide Maps" button.

Moving the mouse over the right part of the strip (about where the buttons should be) will show the time when the strip was last refreshed.
Moving the mouse over the right part of the strip (at about the middle of the strips height) will make the buttons appear (if they where hidden).



To make it work:
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Press the "ON/OFF" button.



Exiting the program:
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Press the mouse over the right part of the strip (about where the buttons should be) but not on the buttons.



The Screen Top/Bottom button:
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This one is to place the strip on the top or on the botton zone of the screen. Since the strip can not be moved as other regular windows, this is the only choice you have. 



Auto Start:
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QMonitor will automatically run each time it restarts once you have set a zone on the Area Select box. Otherwise, it will launch, but it
won't run until you select a zone and press the On/Off button.



To make the program launch when Windows starts up:
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I've included a small program named ras.exe with this package so you can make Qmonitor or any other program automaticaly start when Windows startup or after a reboot.

Run ras.exe and either type the filename and location for the program you want or press the open button and find it on the disks. Finally, press the Ok button to go ahead with the setting.
Note: If you run ras.exe, Qmonitor will auto launch and run the next time your computer starts. Refer to the Auto Start section of this doc to learn the condition for this to happen.



Product: Earthquake Monitor
Publisher: PGTec 
Version: 1.0
Platform: Windows (all)
Price: Free
Support: None
Banners: none
Other Ads: none
Spyware: none
Troyans: none
Home Site: http://www.bawy.org/pgtec/free/qmonitor.html


** Don't ask me why it doesn't work if you don't have an internet connection **