Testers Needed: Metar Wx Reports on Your Cell Phone

Looking for pilot beta testers to help us test a new Metar weather txt
messaging service. Your account is free in exchange for helping us to
test. Visit us at www.wxnotice.com.

On Mon, 29 Aug 2005 09:10:56 -0700, wrote:

Looking for pilot beta testers to help us test a new Metar weather txt
messaging service. Your account is free in exchange for helping us to
test. Visit us at www.wxnotice.com.
Is this a worlwide service or restricted to one country only (presumably
America?)
Geo

On Mon, 29 Aug 2005 19:18:58 GMT, Geo
wrote:

On Mon, 29 Aug 2005 09:10:56 -0700, wrote:

Looking for pilot beta testers to help us test a new Metar weather txt
messaging service. Your account is free in exchange for helping us to
test. Visit us at www.wxnotice.com.
Is this a worlwide service or restricted to one country only (presumably
America?)
Geo

At the moment it's US only. There are technical issues about getting
the txt msgs out to another country outside of the US. I plan to take
a look at providing international service after the US version is
fine-tuned and running OK. However, I don't have a time table as to
when that might be. But it's on my to-do list. You may be able to help
me test if your outside of the US. Email me and tell me who your
cellular provider is. I have some questions I need to ask you, etc.
Maybe we can speed this up (international support) if I can get some
help!

Thanks...

On Mon, 29 Aug 2005 23:07:57 +0100, Peter
wrote:


wrote

Looking for pilot beta testers to help us test a new Metar weather txt
messaging service. Your account is free in exchange for helping us to
test. Visit us at www.wxnotice.com.
Is this a worlwide service or restricted to one country only (presumably
America?)
Geo

At the moment it's US only. There are technical issues about getting
the txt msgs out to another country outside of the US. I plan to take
a look at providing international service after the US version is
fine-tuned and running OK. However, I don't have a time table as to
when that might be. But it's on my to-do list. You may be able to help
me test if your outside of the US. Email me and tell me who your
cellular provider is. I have some questions I need to ask you, etc.
Maybe we can speed this up (international support) if I can get some
help!

Technically, SMS should work worldwide but it costs a lot more money
to send the message.

That's exactly what I need to research and find out. So far I've had
no 'outside of the US' pilots sign up for a free account at my
wxnotice.com web site. I don't mind pushing my development schedule up
for international support if I could get a few pilots in other
countries to work with me on these issues.

We're already parsing the Metar reports for Kilos, Meters, etc. so I
don't think it would be too big of an effort to get international
support working.

wrote:

Looking for pilot beta testers to help us test a new Metar weather txt
messaging service. Your account is free in exchange for helping us to
test. Visit us at www.wxnotice.com.

I got a new cell phone in June and subscribed to My Cast until I cancelled
it yesterday. Cute, but not very practical. And, it has not only what
you propose but weather graphics.

In a previous article, Peter said:
website their script rips the data from A lot of this goes on - the
NOAA ARL site has been modified to require the human interpretation of
a graphic, to prevent automated weather data ripping.

Not so with the NOAA ftp site. The perl script that generates
http://xcski.com/~ptomblin/taf.html gets the TAFs and METARs connects to
ftp://weather.noaa.gov/data/forecasts/taf/stations/ and
ftp://weather.noaa.gov/data/observat...etar/stations/

--
Paul Tomblin http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/
If the automobile had followed the same development as the computer a
Rolls Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon and
explode once a year killing everybody inside. - Robert Cringley (InfoWorld)

Hi,

I got a new cell phone in June and subscribed to My Cast until I cancelled
it yesterday. Cute, but not very practical. And, it has not only what
you propose but weather graphics.

What would be practical? i.e. assuming you had a cell phone or Pocket PC,
what weather information would you like to see? Was it not practical
because of the small screen size or because of MyCast's functionality?

Hilton

On Tue, 30 Aug 2005 05:55:25 -0700, wrote:



wrote:

Looking for pilot beta testers to help us test a new Metar weather txt
messaging service. Your account is free in exchange for helping us to
test. Visit us at www.wxnotice.com.

I got a new cell phone in June and subscribed to My Cast until I cancelled
it yesterday. Cute, but not very practical. And, it has not only what
you propose but weather graphics.

My Metar service is setup differently. When you create an airport
record to monitor an airport, you specify 3 trigger paramters: wind,
vis and ceiling. Let's say, 10kts, 5sm and 3500 ceiling. Each hour the
wx is checked and if any one of your 3 triggers is met (wind = 10kts
and/or vis = 5 and/or ceil = 3500 feet) then a txt msg is sent.

You also have the option to email (not txt msg due to its size
exceeding 160 chars) the english decoded Metar report.

I've tried to design my service with flexibility in mind. So, while it
is intended to send txt msgs to a cell phone, you *can* have your data
sent to your email address.

You should check out the web site and I would welcome your feedback on
it's current feature set. In the future I intend to add wx graphics
but I agree with you re MyCast. Not that practical IMO. That's exactly
why I designed my service as a 'push' technology. You don't have to
push a bunch of keys on your web enabled cell phone to get to the wx
you want. You create a record on a web site of what wx you want and we
'push' it to you so all you have to do is open your phone to answer
the incoming txt msg.

In a previous article, "Hilton" said:
Hi,
I got a new cell phone in June and subscribed to My Cast until I cancelled
it yesterday. Cute, but not very practical. And, it has not only what
you propose but weather graphics.

What would be practical? i.e. assuming you had a cell phone or Pocket PC,
what weather information would you like to see? Was it not practical
because of the small screen size or because of MyCast's functionality?

I've also got a cell phone weather thingy, but WxServer not MyCast.
Usually I don't use it, because I'd rather find a WiFi connection and use
my laptop. There is just more information available and a better user
interface with a laptop. The limitations of the cell phone screen size
and the limited keyboard mean that I only use the cell phone in a dire
situation, or to do a spot check of the radar picture while I'm between
WiFi hotspots.


--
Paul Tomblin http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/
C isn't that hard: void (*(*f[])())() defines f as an array of
unspecified size, of pointers to functions that return pointers to
functions that return void.

Hilton wrote:

Hi,

I got a new cell phone in June and subscribed to My Cast until I cancelled
it yesterday. Cute, but not very practical. And, it has not only what
you propose but weather graphics.

What would be practical? i.e. assuming you had a cell phone or Pocket PC,
what weather information would you like to see? Was it not practical
because of the small screen size or because of MyCast's functionality?


Small screen size. Inability to scroll through a route longer than some length
predetermined by MyCast. Also, it works only where the cell sites have the data
system (Cingular in my case). I was at KBIH and KMMH where I had strong digital
voice, yet no MyCast.

For this stuff to be practical it's got to have a screen at least as large as a
Garmin 530's, and connectivity has to be as robust in the boonies as it is in a
major metro area. In fact, it is more important in the boonies than in the
metro area because there are generally options in the metro areas.