Adopt vs Living Earth
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Adopt
Access real-time data from autonomous oceanographic floats that record seismic activity. View instrument locations, trajectories, and health parameters. This app provides a low-cost method for oceanic data collection.
- View MERMAID instrument locations
- Access recent trajectories
- Obtain ocean depth information
- View instrumental metadata
- Identify instruments by name and institution
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Adopt-A-Float allows users to access trajectory metadata and state-of-health parameters of the EarthScope-Oceans MERMAID fleet. MERMAID, short for Mobile Earthquake Recording in Marine Areas by Independent Divers, is a long-lived drifting autonomous float equipped with a hydrophone capable of recording acoustic waveforms generated by distant earthquakes. Most earthquakes occur at or near plate boundaries, yet most seismic monitoring stations are on dry land. Deployed but not recovered, telemetering data in near-real-time, MERMAIDs are uniquely positioned as a low-cost alternative for geophysical and environmental oceanic data collection. Diving down to a typical parking depth of 1500 m below the ocean surface, they passively drift with the ocean currents, recording the ambient acoustic wavefield, identifying earthquake signals, and surfacing to report those, on average every 4-7 days with the current settings, which are expected to give them a five-year life span. When at the surface, MERMAID collects GPS location and time information and communicates with the IRIDIUM satellite constellation using RUDICS. Using this iOS app you can: View the current location of all MERMAID instruments View their most recent trajectories and obtain information about ocean depth View instrumental metadata such as battery level and instrument pressure readings Identify the instruments by name and by operating institution Developed by Tenzing Sherpa ©2021 by Frederik J Simons (www.frederik.net) Let us know what you think! Give us feedback via https://github.com/tenzingsherpaa/AdoptAFloat-3.0/issues We acknowledge support from the U.S. National Science Foundation (www.nsf.org) under grants OCE-1917058 and EAR-1150145 (CAREER), and from Princeton University. MERMAID was designed by scientists and engineers and is now built by OSEAN SAS (www.osean.fr), from which it is commercially available. EarthScope-Oceans (www.earthscopeoceans.org) is an organization founded by a multidisciplinary group of geoscientists who are coordinating efforts to create a global network of sensors that monitor the Earth from within the oceanic environment. As other organizations are doing for the land-based seismological communities today, EarthScope-Oceans shepherds national projects into the international arena where globally relevant, applicable, and mutually agreed-upon decisions can be made on instrument development, science objectives, data management, and outreach.
Living Earth
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The planet, live: every earthquake ripples where it struck, hurricanes spin with their real forecast tracks, wildfires burn, volcanoes glow, and the aurora dances over the poles — all on a beautiful 3D globe, straight from USGS, NOAA, NASA, and the Smithsonian. Tap anything for its story. A quake card shows the actual USGS ShakeMap and what its magnitude really means. A hurricane card shows the storm photographed from orbit minutes ago. Every one of 1,214 volcanoes carries its photo and geologic history. THE LIVING GLOBE • Live earthquakes, sized and colored by magnitude, rippling as they arrive • Hurricanes and tropical storms with NOAA's forecast track • Wildfires tracked from orbit by NASA • The aurora oval, forecast by NOAA and animated like the real thing • 1,214 volcanoes from the Smithsonian's catalog — recent eruptions glow • Tectonic plate boundaries: flip them on and the quakes explain themselves REPLAY THE WEEK Scrub through the past seven days and watch 400 earthquakes strike in sequence — the Ring of Fire literally draws itself. BENEATH YOU Which tectonic plate are you standing on? How far is the nearest plate boundary? Your nearest volcano? The week's quakes around you? One tap answers, computed entirely on your device. QUAKE ALERTS Optional notifications for significant earthquakes near you and major ones worldwide — no account, nothing sent anywhere. GUIDED TOURS The Ring of Fire in eight stops, and Legendary Earth — Vesuvius, Tambora, the 1960 M9.5, the dinosaur-killing impact, and more — each with real photography. TODAY ON EARTH The planet's day in one glance, on a widget too. Share any event as a poster. All data comes from public scientific agencies: USGS, NOAA, NASA, and the Smithsonian Institution. No account. No tracking. Your location never leaves your device.
Screenshots
Verdict
Adopt and Living Earth are too close to call on the numbers: across 5 compared parameters — price, ads, in-app purchases and device support among them — neither pulls far enough ahead to decide it. What separates them is feature set and interface, not measurable difference.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
| Parameter | Adopt | Living Earth |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 1 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 40 months | — |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 17.5 | 17.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 1 MB | 9 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Frederik Simons | Cinnamon Mobile LLC |
In-app purchases
Adopt
No in-app purchases
Living Earth
No in-app purchases









