Re:Man, weather.com really sucks. I bet I could make a bette...
by henning on Wednesday January 02, 2008 @12:41PM
(#94332)
Are there plans to make it easy to label AppJet code as under certain license terms? (Creative Commons, GPL, LGPL, BSD, Microsoft's 'Shared Source' silliness...)
Re:Man, weather.com really sucks. I bet I could make a bette...
by henning on Sunday December 30, 2007 @04:59PM
(#93731)
Feature request: let me give you my email address and my zip code so you can send me an email in case it's likely to rain in my area that day. I check my email every morning over breakfast so it could work out nicely.
If you want to put some advertisements (that aren't obnoxious) along with the data, I really don't care. I am a moderately affluent college-aged male who enjoys buying electronics, games, and other goods online on a frequent basis.
Re:Man, weather.com really sucks. I bet I could make a bette...
by nailer on Sunday December 30, 2007 @07:38PM
(#93766)
Simpleweather did one odd thing: when I typed my city in the search box, it showed one result. Since it didn't have a line beath it I didn't even realize it was a hyperlink.
If there's one result, take them to it.
One good thing tho: it knew that that Celsius is used everywhere outside the US.
Re:Man, weather.com really sucks. I bet I could make a bette...
by chandler on Monday December 31, 2007 @11:14AM
(#93915)
I've always been a fan of wunderground (http://wund.com). In addition to the main site, it has similar functionality to what's described in the article with its mobile/iphone subsites.
Re:Man, weather.com really sucks. I bet I could make a bette...
by carpal on Sunday December 30, 2007 @01:59PM
(#93684)
A little project I did over the holidays. I got sick of how slow and cluttered weather.com was, so I whipped up this little service. I hope other people can find it useful.
It took me about a day. It is written in Rails. It contains about 100 lines of application code.
Re:Man, weather.com really sucks. I bet I could make a bette...
by rrival on Sunday December 30, 2007 @02:46PM
(#93695)
Feature requests: ip to location or save zip in a cookie that's easy to change. The most annoying part of weather.com for me, aside from the clutter, is typing in a zip. Having the forecast oriented horizontally like a calendar would be nice. ical integration would be pretty slick.
Re:Man, weather.com really sucks. I bet I could make a bette...
by paulgb on Sunday December 30, 2007 @05:36PM
(#93737)
I've always thought it would be cool for there to be a site that just looks at your IP and gives you the local weather and time and links to other relevant info.
Re:Man, weather.com really sucks. I bet I could make a bette...
by notanumber on Wednesday January 02, 2008 @10:43AM
(#94307)
Wouldn't work for people behind a corporate firewall. My old employer used to route all of its traffic through the head office in the US even though we were in Canada.
Re:Man, weather.com really sucks. I bet I could make a bette...
by jcd on Monday December 31, 2007 @10:59AM
(#93912)
I've been using the forecasts on http://weather.gov lately. In fact, using the search field on the left, I entered my zipcode and got taken to a nice forecast page with an obnoxiously long URL that I then bookmarked in Safari and set up as a hotkey in QuickSilver. Now I type Cmd-Space at any time to be taken to a perfect forecast summary with a disgustingly rich set of maps, radar, and satellite images, discussion of the forecast by the forecaster, etc., all a click or two away.
My setup curve was a bit long, but now that it's set up it's unbelievably easy to check the weather. So if you could rig up an app that even approximates that without all the manual setup work that I had to put into it, then I'm sure you'd find hordes of users.
Re:Man, weather.com really sucks. I bet I could make a bette...
by josefresco on Monday December 31, 2007 @10:26AM
(#93898)
I usually don't plug anything here but this is directly related to my latest weather startup: http://www.OtherWeather.com
Better interface and layout than weather.com (less ads), social influence (each forecast is rated and users ranked), Google map mashup, user profile pages and weather widgets/forecast RSS feed.
I just launched, and haven't had the time to promote but check us out.
Re:Man, weather.com really sucks. I bet I could make a bette...
by mhartl on Sunday December 30, 2007 @09:40PM
(#93798)
It is possible! Negative temperatures are perfectly well-defined (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_temperature). In fact, they are higher than positive temperatures. There is a discontinuity in the traditional temperature system at 0, and the highest possible temperature is 0-, i.e., zero approached from the left. The lowest temperature (the traditional "absolute zero") is 0+.
Perhaps a more sensible system is one that uses \beta = -1/kT to measure temperature, where k is Boltzmann's constant. This temperature scale runs from -infinity to +infinity, with no discontinuities.
Re:Man, weather.com really sucks. I bet I could make a bette...
by carpal on Sunday December 30, 2007 @10:14PM
(#93806)
Weird. It comes straight from the National Weather Service, so it must be something strange with their data. Some sanity checking would be advisable, though.
Re:Man, weather.com really sucks. I bet I could make a bette...
by plusbryan on Monday December 31, 2007 @11:03AM
(#93914)
You're right that weather.com really sucks, but it's much better at finding locations. On forecaster, zip codes seem to work, but trying to type in Monterey, CA results in Monterey, Louisiana. Monterey CA results in Monterey Indiana. If you have multiple results, how about giving me a list?
Re:Man, weather.com really sucks. I bet I could make a bette...
by slashcom on Monday December 31, 2007 @12:14AM
(#93830)
I love it. The app is designed like a perfect iphone app, but when rendered on the iphone, the huge orange text caused it to render everything small. Other than that, it's perfect; easy to use, immediate information that I want!
Re:Man, weather.com really sucks. I bet I could make a bette...
by carpal on Sunday December 30, 2007 @02:55PM
(#93697)
Are those valid zip codes? Neither 77915 or 12345 are in my database of zip codes.
I have a table that has the lat/long of zip codes so that I can find the closest observation station.
Edit: If I can't find the zip, I'll default to that state's center. So even invalid zip codes like 12345 will "work"- in this case, it'll go to around Schenectady.
Re:Man, weather.com really sucks. I bet I could make a bette...
by irrelative on Sunday December 30, 2007 @07:27PM
(#93761)
Having worked there, I can confirm that 12345 is a valid zip code -- it's technically the zip code for the GE plant in Schenectady. It was at one point, large enough to warrant its own zip code...
Re:Man, weather.com really sucks. I bet I could make a bette...
by jraines on Sunday December 30, 2007 @08:13PM
(#93775)
I think there's enough of a need for 'just the forecast' to build this app.
Feature creep is exactly why weather.com sucks (well, that and ads).
That being said -- a replacement feature that's more in line with simplicity and 'just the data' would be an hour by hour forecast. That's what most people use the radar for anyway. Well, except when there's a severe storm. For that, you could add . . . . [hours later] . . . and then you just have to secure the rights to www.weather.com!
http://weather.appjet.net/
You can check out the source at http://source.weather.appjet.net/. It's about 75 lines of code. Feel free to clone/modify it.
If you want to put some advertisements (that aren't obnoxious) along with the data, I really don't care. I am a moderately affluent college-aged male who enjoys buying electronics, games, and other goods online on a frequent basis.
If there's one result, take them to it.
One good thing tho: it knew that that Celsius is used everywhere outside the US.
I wonder why that is...
It took me about a day. It is written in Rails. It contains about 100 lines of application code.
Doing geolocation would be sweet. I'll try it out.
My setup curve was a bit long, but now that it's set up it's unbelievably easy to check the weather. So if you could rig up an app that even approximates that without all the manual setup work that I had to put into it, then I'm sure you'd find hordes of users.
Nice job.
Better interface and layout than weather.com (less ads), social influence (each forecast is rated and users ranked), Google map mashup, user profile pages and weather widgets/forecast RSS feed.
I just launched, and haven't had the time to promote but check us out.
Edit: It appears to be fixed now. :-)
Perhaps a more sensible system is one that uses \beta = -1/kT to measure temperature, where k is Boltzmann's constant. This temperature scale runs from -infinity to +infinity, with no discontinuities.
-2147483648 is still probably a bug, though. :-)
Weather for Toronto, Kansas
Right now it is 45XF.
Hmm.
Paris, Arkansas
Great !
We've been notified about this issue and we'll take a look at it shortly."
Hmm.. I'll bet you cant. /snark
I got this error twice.
entries: "64055" "Kansas City"
system: Firefox 2.0.0.11 Mac OS X 10.4
I hate how on weather.com if I type in Dallas, TX it takes me to another page where it asks me if I meant Dallas, TX, United States. SO ANNOYING
So, what are your TOS? Can I scrape your data for a home automation/monitoring project I've been working on?
You might want to just scrape it from wherever he's scraping it from.
.................
Also, I found a bug:
Sorry, we couldn't find a result for "new york city".
(Texas) Sorry, we couldn't find a result for "77915".
(New York) Sorry, we couldn't find a result for "12345".
90210 works
I have a table that has the lat/long of zip codes so that I can find the closest observation station.
Edit: If I can't find the zip, I'll default to that state's center. So even invalid zip codes like 12345 will "work"- in this case, it'll go to around Schenectady.
"Right now, it's 39 degrees and Sunny."
Feature creep is exactly why weather.com sucks (well, that and ads).
That being said -- a replacement feature that's more in line with simplicity and 'just the data' would be an hour by hour forecast. That's what most people use the radar for anyway. Well, except when there's a severe storm. For that, you could add . . . . [hours later] . . . and then you just have to secure the rights to www.weather.com!
(This is Erik Peterson. We met at ATL Startup Weekend. Damned Internet handles. Using your name is a good idea, huh?)