
What's so special with minimalweather.com? - elcuervo
http://www.minimalweather.com/about
======
shawabawa3
So the icon shows what the weather was the previous time you ran it?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding it but it seems like an anti-feature to me.

~~~
zzzmarcus
There's an app that'll show you the temperature in realtime on the icon
without the need to open the app. It's called eWeather HD and uses the
notifications feature of iOS in a pretty clever way. The app itself is a
little obtuse, but having the temperature right there has made it worthwhile
to me.

[http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/eweather-hd-weather-
forecast/...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/eweather-hd-weather-
forecast/id401533966?mt=8)

~~~
ChrisClark
I've just realized how impossible it would be for me to live without widgets
on the home screen. I've been taking them for granted it seems.

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jpastika
I think the value here isn't really displaying weather. I believe the author
effectively demonstrates an interesting technique that non-native apps can
utilize to make them feel more native.

As far as awesome and simple non-native weather apps go, check out:
<http://pattern.dk/sun/>

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pooriaazimi
Really beautiful.

Suggestion: Add city name. I know you don't want to clutter the interface,
thus the name _minimalist_ weather, but it makes me nervous to look at a
screen and _hope_ it has determined my location accurately. It makes me
skeptical about the results too, as I didn't get any notifications on OS X
Lion saying "minimalistweather.com wants to use your location". Also it
displayed a gorgeous "25 degrees", while OS X's weather widget says "29
degrees"...

~~~
elcuervo
Thank you for you feedback. I'll add that feature along with other ones. Show
and correct city and change from C to F.

~~~
pooriaazimi
Thanks. But make ˚C -> ˚F an option! Many of us don't have the faintest idea
what 100˚F is (I must multiply it with 5, divide it by 9 and subtract 32 or 23
from it... too much work)!

(as a side note: for the benefit of others, ˚ is typed with option-k. I had to
try a million different combination until I found it).

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gamache
Weather Live has been doing this for quite some time; I wouldn't call this "so
special".

It's not an enviable feature. Right now I am in San Jose and I can see what
the temperature was in Boston last time I launched the app.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
They took a simple feature and hacked it to its limits, I'd say that's pretty
cool.

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Erwin
Cute hack, remindining me of "Defender of the Favicon":
<http://www.p01.org/releases/DEFENDER_of_the_favicon/>

Which is a JS version of Defender that displays wherever your browser displays
the sites favorite icon.

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startupmum
Very nice as a hack. I am not sure about the usability of it, and a lot of the
comments already capture that. If you really wanted to hack this, how about
the following: 1\. You package it as an app (not that hard to do, from where
you'll be starting) 2\. You let people set parameters for how often they want
to be notified, for which city and in which scale 3\. You use the push
notification feature to push them the notifications as per their settings.

But all that's just trying to create the better weather app/notifier. And
there's tons of ways to do that.

What you've done is really cool with the icon becoming the widget, and for
that, it is a great idea. Makes me think what else you could be using this
hack for - not just weather. Imagine sponsorship space - share icon space with
main advertiser for a content app. Or display your high score in a game. Or
show the last badge you earned in a gamified app....the possibilities are
endless. Very cool hack!

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at-fates-hands
the live tiles on my windows 7 phone does this actually for several apps
(shows up to date info), including my weather app.

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badclient
Is there a weather app that shows me the weather right now relative to the
weather at the same time _yesterday_?

I don't know about you guys but I always evaluate weather in relative
terms("it's cooler than yesterday morning") and yet most apps just throw the
temperature at you...which could be wildly deceiving depending on wind etc.

~~~
magicalist
It's not an app (or at least, it isn't a standalone feature of an app), but if
you search on wolfram alpha, it usually provides a handy graph for the past.
I'm always wondering the same thing as well.

eg <http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=weather+san+francisco>

and hit "more" when the "Weather history & forecast" section shows up. I don't
know how permanent this URL is, but here's the result I get from that:

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/pod.jsp?id=MSP32441a2b0ia1...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/pod.jsp?id=MSP32441a2b0ia1c88ff8d5000047d3gfiiag46gh6c&s=8&button=1)

I would love to see a better interface on that data as a standalone app.

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RandallBrown
Pretty clever to generate the image for the app icon.

I did a similar thing where I converted a screenshot of a bus schedule to a
data URI and saved it to my homescreen. I did it so I could check the bus
schedule in places without service.

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fcoury
If you're using Chrome, the Currently extension is a must:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ojhmphdkpgbibohbnp...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ojhmphdkpgbibohbnpbfiefkgieacjmh?hl=en)

When you open a new tab, it'll show you current time and weather forecast:

[http://f.cl.ly/items/1X373t2P143f0j1I3a3R/Screen%20Shot%2020...](http://f.cl.ly/items/1X373t2P143f0j1I3a3R/Screen%20Shot%202012-07-25%20at%201.14.51%20PM.png)

Nice typography, choose from 3 color schemes and whatnot.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I prefer More Interestingness* - I have a clock on my machine already, and I
rarely need to know the weather every time I load a new tab.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ngddmdmkjnnefgggjn...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ngddmdmkjnnefgggjnnnepijkcighifa)

~~~
mgurlitz
That link goes to Currently still. Here's More Interestingness:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ngddmdmkjnnefgggjn...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ngddmdmkjnnefgggjnnnepijkcighifa)

~~~
pavel_lishin
Oops - thanks!

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laserDinosaur
I don't get it. My Android has a widget on my homepage that shows me the
current weather for my location, updated live. Is that all this is doing?

~~~
cmelbye
If you look at the screenshot of the home screen, you'll notice that this is
not an Android device and thus has no Android widgets. So, no, that's not "all
this is doing".

~~~
Killswitch
"But my Android can do it, why can't the iPhone, another reason why Apple
sucks!" :rollseyes

~~~
laserDinosaur
Well, I did mean it as an actual question. I didn't know Apple didn't have
widgets (or something similar)

~~~
cmelbye
If iOS had widgets, don't you think that people wouldn't resort to the half-
working hack described in the linked article?

~~~
laserDinosaur
Hence my confusion.

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jklein24
Very cool that you got this to work in iOS, but you know what else is special?
Android widgets.

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retube
I never understood the point of a service that tells you the weather where you
are.

~~~
jedberg
So you know what to expect when you walk outside.

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drewsears
Having to open the app to update the weather rather defeats its utility.

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Lexarius
For some reason I'm really bothered by the fact that it's locked to Fahrenheit
if you're in the US. At least give me a query parameter or something.

~~~
elcuervo
That's fair. I didn't figured out a way to keep a clean UI and switch unit.
Will add a query param and think something for the interface. Thank you for
the feedback.

~~~
rpicard
On the other side of that, I'm in the U.S. but I use a VPN in Sweden so I can
only see it in Celsius.

It might be cool if you could click the text, "20 ºC," to switch between the
two.

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dfc
Nine times out of ten I want to know the weather X hours from now, not the
current weather or the weather Y hours in the past.

~~~
rogerbinns
There is an excellent widget on Android that shows the weather for the next 24
hours which does exactly this.
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.veierland....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.veierland.aix)

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drewsears
Can I specify a zip code? I went to it on my desktop and my phone, and both
show different, wrong temperatures.

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nachteilig
Seems like a decent use for iPad since we still (!?) don't have the built-in
iOS app.

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jpswade
This will be great on my blackberry, all the other free weather apps out there
suck.

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knowaveragejoe
Ugh... minimal doesn't have to mean useless. In my mind you could display four
times as many stats about the weather and still be a far cry from the clutter-
fuck that is weather.com. As it is this is useless for anybody who wants to
know anything beyond "is it hot or cold right now."

~~~
pmelendez
Still this is enough for some people (like me) who just want to see the
current temperature. There are plenty of sites/apps that do what you said so
no need to tag this one as 'useless'.

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cnlwsu
minimalweather 2.0: I like to call it "window" :)

~~~
Argorak
Hm? My window provides an experience rather close to reality, except the
'getting soaked by summer rain' part. I wouldn't call that 'minimal'. Maybe
your window is broken. Does it run iOS, Android or WP7?

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PaulHoule
i badly want weather radar that doesn't suck

~~~
recampbell
I think <http://fullscreenweather.com> is pretty good.

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dcadenas
It's great!

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anupj
Nothing.

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drivebyacct2
The really, really, really poor man's widget. What's the point if it's showing
me stale data? If it's been so long that I can't remember the temperature, I'm
going to have to launch the app anyway.

~~~
pooriaazimi
I think it's more of a neat hack, not a replacement for anything.

