Popular Weather App 'Dark Sky' Expands to the Web

[CarlJ]

Great for people who didn't know that this product has been available from NOAA for years.

Uh, what? This product? No, they just put up the website recently. Weather websites in general? Those have been available from many sources for many years (I would have thought that was obvious). This particular take on weather websites? Forecast.io was their first version, this is their second version. More of a rebranding than a new website. But nobody else is doing exactly what they are - synthesizing data together from a bunch of different networks of sensors/stations with their particular algorithms for correlating all the data.

 

[IJ Reilly]

Uh, what? This product? No, they just put up the website recently. Weather websites in general? Those have been available from many sources for many years (I would have thought that was obvious). This particular take on weather websites? Forecast.io was their first version, this is their second version. More of a rebranding than a new website. But nobody else is doing exactly what they are - synthesizing data together from a bunch of different networks of sensors/stations with their particular algorithms for correlating all the data.

Nobody is doing exactly what anyone else is doing but that does not change the fact that the NWS/NOAA has been supplying point weather forecasts in one hour resolutions online for years. So while a lot of commercial repackagers are presenting this data in different and perhaps more interesting ways, it doesn't mean they are inventing new and better data or better forecasts.

 

[44267547]

The Dark Sky application for the Apple Watch is a decent app. Works well.

 

[jetho]

This app is one where it isn't just a matter of translating all the English messages to German. It works because they're averaging together (well, that's a considerable oversimplification) a whole bunch of different specific localized weather sources/networks that are available in the US, and their algorithms for the "averaging" are specifically tuned to those US resources. Sure, Europe has state-run and personal weather stations, too, but they're unlikely to be arranged/associated in precisely the same way as the ones Dark Sky is using in the US.

So, changing the on-screen text into German wouldn't be too hard, but rewriting their entire server-based weather collecting/comparing back-end to handle a non-US region would be a huge job - not just writing software, but doing the research into what all the weather station networks are and how to access the data, and getting the appropriate permissions to access all of them.

I know that. But it's still a pity because it seems to be a damn fine app in the US. I haven't come across an app that has the same features like dark sky AND has such a nice UI (which is almost equally important to me).

 

[CarlJ]

I know that. But it's still a pity because it seems to be a damn fine app in the US. I haven't come across an app that has the same features like dark sky AND has such a nice UI (which is almost equally important to me).

Keep in mind that DarkSky.net, like Forecast.io before it, has an API for developers (quite nice, I use it for my own weather station), which is used by many other iOS weather applications. If they say, "Powered by Dark Sky" somewhere buried in the app, they're getting the same data. They may not show it as nicely, but that's partly down to personal taste. Same limits to where it works, of course.