I was a software developer in a previous life. It turned out I'm just
not cut out for sitting still and staring at a computer monitor for 40+
hours per week. These days, my day job is electronic hardware design
but I still write code when necessary for a project and as a hobby to
keep my chops from getting too rusty.

I've written a handy little app for my Pocket PC to download and
display TAFs, METARs, and RADAR from the NWS, and prog charts and
satellite images from ADDS. Anywhere there's WiFi I have textual
weather and animated graphics with less overhead in bandwidth used and
a WAY better small-screen presentation than Pocket Internet Explorer.
I used it last summer in hotel lobbies across the U. S. as I made my
way from Phoenix to the east coast and back in a Cessna 150 with a
3-day stop at Oshkosh. The trip was definitely a first for me - I'm a
200-hour private pilot, but I'll definitely do it again - hopefully in
something about 50% faster. My program worked like a charm though.

The software isn't yet commercially viable but I'm thinking it might be
worth my time to make it so. It needs better error checking. If
there's no internet available it'll just show you old data without
telling you. I'd need to fix that. Since it contains hard-coded URLs
for weather data that may be invalid one day, I was thinking of
creating an architecture whereby the app could check in with my server
for updates and download new menu items that point to interesting
sources of data. In a general sense there are probably other uses for
the basic framework of an application like that i.e. maybe stock
quotes, news, sports scores, maps, etc.

I wrote the thing over a couple of weekends early last summer. I've
used it myself for TAFs and METARs and RADAR almost every day since.

I have a very satisfying day job but I wonder if there might be some
$$$ to be made developing a product like this.

Any Pocket PC and aviation weather aficionados out there want to
motivate me to finish this thing up and make it available for sale?
Anyone wanna help out by beta-testing? Would anyone pay for this
software or maybe a small subscription fee to keep the menus current?
Would the Palm OS and/or Smart-Phone be a better platform? Have I
breached netequitte by suggesting a commercial endeavor of this sort on
r.a.p.?

Regards,

Rob