« Seamless gaming | Main | The year that was »
December 30, 2005
Social Weather 2.0
Here's an idea for a Weather site built around Web 2.0 goodness. There is probably something like this out there already - please let me know if so.
Basically the idea hinges around something I read once, that stated the highest chance of forecasting the correct weather for the next day was to say that it would be the same as today. I can't remember where I read that - but anyway.
The Weather 2.0 site is built on the Google Maps API and a user-base. Each user logs on to the site and can enter the current weather where they happen to be. The form allows things like general observations such as "sun is shining", "snowing" or just "cloudy". You can also enter things like current temperature, wind direction etc. if you happen to have the necessary gadgets available. Free text annotations are also possible "freaking cold" or "raining cats and dogs". The information is then shown as a layer on top of the Google Map and pinned at your current position.
The user can also take a picture of the weather situation, upload that to say Flickr and link to the picture from their current weather observation. Of course you can subscribe to RSS feeds of weather observations from places you may be interested in.
Carsten came up with an interesting addition to the idea while we were discussing this in the office today (yes, a slow day here in the mine) - personal forecasting. Each user can also enter their personal forecast for the next day - based on whatever information they happen to have available to them (meteorologic data, cloud formations, the activities of local animals, pains in various body parts, whatever). Then in the Map-view, you can switch between current weather and tomorrows weather based on personal foreacasting.
An application like Social Weather 2.0 would surely disrupt the commercial weather-forecasting market for good.
Technorati Tags: google maps, social software, weather
Posted by Matthew at December 30, 2005 03:24 PM
Comments
Weather Underground already does something like this: http://www.wunderground.com/stationmaps/gmap.asp?zip=73130&magic=1&wmo=99999
But it's nowhere near the "social" aspect of it.
Posted by: Tony at December 30, 2005 07:03 PM
Brilliant! Very creative thinking.
Posted by: mikko puhakka at December 30, 2005 08:53 PM
You kind of glossed over the GPS necessary for this. The users would have to be able to give GPS coordinates of where they are (I'm actually surprised that this isn't a standard feature on digital cameras at this point), or the up and coming Galileo system...
That way, exact positioning could be seen, triangulated between users automatically, and so on and so forth. This actually has great impact on many other areas larger than weather, and could even be a useful tool for forensics in disasters/human caused disasters. With time, GPS coordinates, direction and so forth factored in - as well as the error values... the idea has some serious merits.
Earth as a Black Box. Intriguing.
Posted by: Taran at December 31, 2005 12:13 AM