
Is it going to rain? - jwilliams
http://goingtorain.com/
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there
hey, that's my site. it's been up for a while but it got posted to stumbleupon
the other day and has been seeing a ton of traffic. glad it's of use to anyone
other than myself.

i made it one day after being annoyed with all the junk on weather.com. i just
wanted a simple answer whether it was going to rain so i knew which car i
could drive that day.

~~~
robg
I really dig the simplicity - in the app and in use. We have a dynamic IP
that's not even remotely tied to our location (Hughes Net Satellite) and so it
seems to get reset every time we get a new IP. Any way to implement some
cookie to save the zip code?

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joshsharp
It picked my location perfectly, but then gave me a temperature in Fahrenheit.
All you need now is to match locations to measurement standards (ie. US, UK
and that one other country imperial, all others metric).

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holygoat
Just goes to show that it's not easy to match location to measurement
standard: you would be wrong if you picked Imperial measurements for the UK,
unless the person viewing the page is of a certain mindset and born before
about 1975.

I was raised in the UK, and used celsius. Now I live in the US and have
learned to use Fahrenheit.

On a related note, I was very annoyed that Yahoo Weather will allow you to
_either_ choose centigrade and kilometers per hour, _or_ Fahrenheit and MPH,
but not to mix and match. Insane.

~~~
axod
IMHO The UK is slightly more complex than that. When it's hot, we use
Fahrenheit - "It's almost 100℉ out there!. When it's cold we use Celsius -
"Brrr! -7℃"

Probably best to show both.

~~~
swombat
More importantly, the UK is far simpler than all the others.

The answer to "is it going to rain?" here is always "Who knows? Probably...
can't really say. It looks sunny outside, but it was raining this morning so
it might rain again later today."

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a-priori
Undocumented features from the HTML source:

    
    
      try /XXXXX for a specific zip code
      or /tomorrow for tomorrow's forecast

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daveambrose
Interesting. Nice find.

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kalvin
Question: I've always wanted to see today's temperature in terms of
yesterday's, so like, "it's going to be 5 degrees warmer." Anyone know if this
service is already offered somewhere?

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TobiasCassell
Looks gorgeous. Has anyone built a startup addressing how hard it is to
properly search if an idea already exists?

<http://umbrellatoday.com/>

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andyking
But that site has the "enter your zip code" wall, a wholly unfriendly
stumbling block for a non-US user to be faced with on any site. (You'd be
surprised how many people, erm, "live" in 90210 on signup forms!)
goingtorain.com somehow detected my precise town and told me straight.

~~~
whatusername
I live in 90210 in most forms on the net.

(Okay - and my name is often George Bush or Bill Clinton)

~~~
DEinspanjer
Bah! Silly BevHills holds nothing on Schenectady, NY.
<http://benfry.com/zipdecode/>

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ryanspahn
Nice job! I saw a similar service called umbrellatoday too.

A month or so ago we ( <http://sleep.fm> ) launched wake up to ur weather
report. We speak the weather to you upon zip code entry/alarm time passing.

Thought I'd share via the relevancy of this post. Congrats on your launch!

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kylec
I like how simple it is, but it definitely needs an RSS feed. Seeing as
they're using some sort of IP geolocation, it would be cool if the forecast
'followed' me in the feed when I switched locations.

~~~
wonka
That would be pretty pointless considering RSS feeds are cached.

~~~
ahpeeyem
I think "pointless" is going a bit overboard, it's up to the client to decide
how long to cache a feed, and the cache policy for the feed should use normal
HTTP conventions - the Last-modified, If-modified-since and Expires headers.

If the feed expired in 60 minutes that would be enough to update for changing
locations.

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arohner
I bet it breaks on google reader, and similar browser-based feeds.

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kleneway
I love this site. Last year I posted an idea on my blog that was a collection
of extremely simple sites where you get instant answers to questions like
this. Is it raining, did the Cubs win today, is the stock market up or down,
etc... Cool to see this one in action.

[http://astartupaday.wordpress.com/2007/04/20/startup-32-is-i...](http://astartupaday.wordpress.com/2007/04/20/startup-32-is-
it/)

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whatusername
Matched my location to a suburb. Failed to have data for that suburb though -
only for the capital city. (and only for today - /tomorrow doesnt work)

Also - saying that it will "maybe" rain in Melbourne is a bit of a cop-out -
considering we are famous for having 4 seasons in a day
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Seasons_in_One_Day>)

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hopeless
I only wish <http://www.doineedajacket.com/> would look as clean and lose the
clutter (ads, discussions, blah, blah, blah). However, I still prefer it
because it gives a reason for needing a jacket (it's chilly, rain etc) and
works across the world.

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jrnkntl
In the Netherlands we've got <http://www.buienradar.nl>, pretty cluttered with
ads but it's more accurate than a 'maybe' :) You can see when rain clouds are
approaching your area; almost 'real time' ;)

~~~
ahpeeyem
Yeah Australia's Bureau of Meteorology has radar images online as well:
<http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDR663.shtml>

Shows actual rainfall though, not clouds, so it can be grey and dark outside
but look clear on the radar.

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kilps
Nicely done - except it says it won't rain, so I looked outside - no wait it
is raining. From other comments looks like Google's fault though - but still:
putting that my emphasis on one aspect of the forecast and then getting it
wrong ...

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jakewolf
Check out <http://www.weather.gov/xml/> for another source of weather data.

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parenthesis
How does it know where you are?

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newt0311
geolocation. Info. on wikipedia.

In summary: A reverse-DNS search through the DNS system combined with more
information from geolocation DBs can usually pinpoint location to within a few
miles unless the user goes to some lengths to hide it (ie. use VPNs, tor, ip
spoofing, etc...). Several free databases available if you want to do this
yourself.

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Andys
It isn't that accurate outside of the USA.

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pierrefar
Actually, unless you're on AOL or a handful of other IPs, you can geolocate
too >99% accuracy to a country level for free. See this:
<http://www.maxmind.com/app/geolitecity> .

The city accuracy outside the US is not great.

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terpua
An automatic email if it is going to rain would be handy.

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trickjarrett
Umbrellatoday.com sends you an sms at 7am if it's going to rain on that day.

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simianstyle
lol @ div#prophylactic

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lst
Nice and fine, but here in Europe, in times of satellites, you might sit in
another country as your ISP, so the actual location might differ quite a bit.

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weegee
maybe

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crabapple
matching ips to locales is not new.

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trickjarrett
No indeed it isn't, nor is pointless commenting on news stories. This post was
of another minimalist .com that serves a single purpose without the extra
noise or cruft other sites that provide that information carry.

