21 October 2008

Who said weather is boring?
AccuWeather Brings the Weather to S60 Devices!

AccuWeather had previously provided its landmark weather service to S60 device users using either mobile Web services or a downloadable Java™ Platform, Micro Edition application.

But when S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 2 enabled the use of widgets in its Web Run-Time, then the company jumped in with both feet.

AccuWeather.com's S60 widget has a more attractive user interface than any of the company's previous products, according to Douglas Yule, director of research and development. It makes access to a variety of content — including detailed forecasts, a 15-day calendar view, and satellite radar data — easier than ever.

“The AccuWeather.com widget did not come out of our previous client application,” says Doug Yule, director of research and development at AccuWeather.com. “Instead, we used the experience gained from working with Apple on the original Mac OS X widgets and then with the iPhone weather widgets. Thanks to the existing overlap in browser technology between the S60 devices and Apple’s devices, it was relatively easy for us to bring this across.”

AccuWeather.com has also joined the Nokia WidSet movement, becoming the resident widget that provides global weather information to the Nokia Weather WidSet. WidSets is a phone manufacturer-independent Web 2.0 service that automatically multicasts preferred RSS feeds and user-generated content. WidSets highlights the power of Web 2.0 in combining people, the content they produce, and a social networking dynamic. It facilitates the way that mobility can enhance the Web 2.0 user’s usage and enjoyment of content.

WidSets allows users to build a Content Library, freely choosing content from a variety of sources, such as RSS feeds, blog posts, and photo uploading sites, that can be multicasted to any new-generation Java™ mobile devices. WidSets keeps such content updated and forms a symbiotic relationship with the Web, enabling both media to work as one. Collaborative filtering allows the community to enrich the WidSets Library by providing suggestions for new content that a user did not know about.

The WidSets user interface uses a process of “choose and set” that makes WidSets operative within seconds. Signing up to WidSets is free of charge, and use of WidSets is optimized for minimal data consumption. AccuWeather.com worked closely with Forum Nokia experts on the WidSets technology. “We did not write the code, but we did set up the API so that the WidSets engineers could retrieve weather data into other applications,” says Yule. “A major contribution that we added to the Nokia WidSets was giving it the ability to include 15-day forecasts. These widgets become destinations in their own right,” adds Yule, “and recent Nokia data indicates that our WidSet is by far the most popular in terms of usage.”

How it works

AccuWeather.com offers a number of mobile services, including an increasingly popular ad-supported mobile Web site, which draws traffic from across the globe, and the AccuWeather.com Premium Service. The latter uses a rich, multimedia client to enable users to access detailed forecast information, radar and satellite images, and the AccuWeather.com Hurricane Center, as well as the latest severe-weather watches and warnings, via text-based messaging.

The service lets customers check the weather in real time. In addition, it will send severe weather warnings the moment they are issued.
The downloadable AccuWeather.com Premium subscription service includes zoomable radar and satellite images and maps. The maps include not only weather information, but also air quality and ultraviolet (UV) indices, hurricane tracking, and more.