Android App of the Week: The Weather Channel

Wednesday, October 6th, 2010

Android comes with its own weather app installed, but it’s not the most in-depth of tools: the settings menu offers little more than a choice between Celsius and Fahrenheit, and the front-end offers only basic data.

That’s where The Weather Channel’s eponymous app comes in. Type in your post code or use your phone’s GPS to select a location and you’re presented with a wealth of meteorological information. Aside from basic temperature statistics, a small graphic indicates local weather and wind conditions, humidity, visibility and even the UV index. A quartet of tabs also opens up forecasts for the coming hours, days and weeks.

The innocuous-looking Map It button on each current forecast unleashes another torrent of useful information. Take the selection of layers that can be used on top of Google Maps: radar and cloud cover can be selected individually or mashed up, and zoom controls allow you to get a handle on the weather in your town or, if you’re interested, across entire continents. (more…)

How storm clouds melted a network

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010

As is becoming traditional around Bank Holidays, this is a blog sparked by a current article on the BBC website, this time about harnessing electricity from humid air.

The BBC is sceptical about the claims made by the academic, though to be fair it seems more focussed on his small-scale examples, than on the basic observation that there’s electricity in the atmosphere. My personal and network-related encounter with this phenomenon was tantalising – not because there was St Elmo’s Fire dancing about the patch panels or anything like that, but because the onset of the credit crunch sank what could have been a very nice little project.

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Google predicts Arctic chill for Scotland

Wednesday, March 25th, 2009

The residents of Stornoway in Scotland might want to put an extra log or two on the fire. According to a rather alarming Google weather report, the Outer Hebrides resort is facing unseasonal temperatures of -17C over the next few days. 

The BBC, on the other hand, has the minimum temperature pegged at a far more reasonable 5-6C. What does Google know that the Met Office doesn’t? Or is this a direct result of having eco-doom monger Al Gore as a Google advisor?

We demand answers.

(Thanks to PC Pro reader Phil Taylor for the tip-off.)