Filed under: Software, First Look
FirstLook: WeatherCal 1.0
Wouldn't it be nice to get a weather forecast whenever you look at iCal? That's the premise behind WeatherCal 1.0, a new Mac application from Bare Bones Software.
WeatherCal inserts a five-day weather forecast for your favorite cities right into iCal (above). If you're syncing your iPhone to iCal, that means you have the forecast in your pocket as well:
When you install WeatherCal, it doesn't end up in your Applications folder. Instead, it's a preferences pane that appears in System Preferences (below). You can add as many cities as you'd like to the list, but adding too many cities might make your calendar unreadable.
Each day's forecast is visible in iCal, with a small icon representing the expected weather. In the screenshot at the top of this post, you can see that just when I'll be volunteering for the FIRST Robotics Colorado Regional, snow is expected in my area. Opening the forecast in iCal provides a link to a detail page on the Weather Underground website:
I like the premise of WeatherCal in that I can now remove other weather apps from my iPhone and just look at my calendar. It's also nice to be able to know what the weather is going to be like on days when there's something important going on. For $10, WeatherCal is a very useful little tool. A 30-day full trial is available here.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
neko said 2:19PM on 3-25-2009
or, you can get something like this for free with Weather Underground's ical feeds.
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Robert said 2:42PM on 3-25-2009
I'm glad you said something. I was about to spend 10 minutes writing a script that translates a Yahoo Weather Feed into an iCal file. Given the plethora of free ways to get weather data and the relative ease at which it can be converted to something iCal recognizes, I don't see the point in paying $10.
Dan S. said 9:24AM on 3-26-2009
That's exactly what WeatherCal does -- you're paying $10 for an application that subscribes your iCal to the Wunderground iCal feed.
Chris said 2:30PM on 3-25-2009
http://www.tuaw.com/2009/03/18/weathercal-adds-weather-forecasts-to-ical/
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matthew said 2:47PM on 3-25-2009
Yeah, same thought I had. Why did this get coverage twice in a week with almost exactly the same info? I think Steven Sande and Mat Lu need to communicate more...or someone forgot to update the "pending app reviews" queue after writing a post. :)
FearlessFreep said 2:51PM on 3-25-2009
Yes, never mind this was already previously posted on TUAW last week.
But also, why do you need the forecast in your calendar? Can't you simply view an app or widget for that? Your calendar must not be like mine. The last thing I want is an all-day static event taking up more room from actual appointments.
This seems like a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. What's next? Incorporating your appointments into the Weather application?
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Brandon said 3:04PM on 3-25-2009
Totally unrelated to WeatherCal, though it's cool...I'm happy to see the FIRST Robotics Competition Regional on your calendar in the screenshots. I help run FIRST LEGO League for Iowa, FIRST is a great set of programs. Anyone else going to Atlanta in April?
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ThreeDee912 said 8:07PM on 3-25-2009
I'm in the First Robotics Competition (Team 1989 btw). We won regionals last year, and flew all the way to Atlanta to compete. We didn't win, but it was still a great experience.
This year we came in 44th place out of 66 teams at regionals... :(
Oh well, better luck next year.
mentalsticks said 3:00PM on 3-25-2009
you're kidding, right?
how much is Barebones paying you for writing this drivel?
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JS said 3:13PM on 3-25-2009
Using this approach to put weather info on the iPhone has a few minor difficulties.
First, for up to date weather, it requires that a Mac be running and syncing with MobileMe hourly or daily.
Second, as you can see in the screenshots posted in the review, the temperature may be clipped. For instance, if the forecast is "Slight Chance of Thunderstorms", no temperature is seen at all. In this case you would have to tap on the events shown in the list view to see the complete forecast. This may not be practical for calendar events being displayed on a jailbroken lockscreen.
Third, some of the glyth characters used as "icons" are difficult to see. A good example would be the lightning glyth. Unfortunately when I tried to change fonts (not size) to find something more visible, nearly all of these had the same appearance which I suppose is to be expected from unicode.
I'm not dismissing the app, just pointing out what I've encountered thus far. I dashed off an email about those issues to the developers and they basically said that these were out of their control at this time. I hope they can refine the program in subsequent releases.
On an high note, one thing that I really like about WeatherCal is that it removes expired forecasts from your calendar automatically.
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Dan S. said 9:26AM on 3-26-2009
Actually, no. It won't work with MobileMe.
WeatherCal subscribes your iCal to Wunderground's iCal feed(s). You can do this yourself, by typing your ZIP code into their site and clicking a single link.
And it syncs to your iPhone, so long as you're not using MobileMe's push.
Chris L said 5:03PM on 3-25-2009
Google Calendar also lets you do this & will sync to iCal and iPhone.
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Jeremy said 4:07PM on 3-25-2009
Nice, two separate posts in one week on a useless app. Did someone at BareBones sleep with you to get this kind of coverage?
Seriously. What does a developer have to do to get this kind of love from TUAW? That's a serious question.
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Jason said 4:15PM on 3-25-2009
Pardon the completely off topic-ness, but... Highlands Ranch?!
Steven, do you live out here in Colorado? Notably in Highlands Ranch? Have you attended Refresh Denver or any other Tech/Design/Whatever Meetup?
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Evan Hindra said 4:23PM on 3-25-2009
Or you can simply subscribe to http://www.smashin.com/weather/
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DrWho said 4:46PM on 3-25-2009
I'll never get rid of i.wund.com from my iPhone. I mean, don't you want to see radar too?
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screech said 5:31PM on 3-25-2009
The Weather Channel app has radar now, in addition to traffic cams too.
JohnJohn said 8:39PM on 3-26-2009
I'm in Castle Rock...www.macmingle.com looking for Douglas County, Colorado user group info.
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akatsuki said 2:57PM on 3-27-2009
If it would put cool graphical backgrounds on each day for the forecast... then maybe it would be worthwhile... but $10 for something that is more elegantly solved by subscribing to a weather calendar?
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