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Idea #17670: Weather applet has very limited location list

Written by dubrict the 26 Jan 09 at 04:40. Related project: Gnome. Status: New
Rationale
The weather applet has an extremely limited list of towns for which you can get the weather, requiring many users to figure out what town is closest to them.

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Solution #1: Google Weather
Written by dubrict the 26 Jan 09 at 04:40.
I don't know where the applet gets its weather information from, but it could just use google's weather api and support a lot more locations.

And maybe we could just have the user type in their location, instead of using that awful list.
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Solution #2: Connect to http://www.wunderground.com/
Written by DanteAshton the 27 Mar 09 at 15:00.
Using a source other then the Met office (such as the above link) is preferable. More data is acquired and more locations are supported.
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Solution #3: accuweather.com like in the Firefox add-on Forecastfox
Written by Daniel_le_Rouge the 31 May 09 at 23:13.
accuweather.com has a database for almost every place on the planet. Do know the town of Khody in the far east of Russia? I do not, but accuweather.com tells me that the temperature is 9°C/48°F now. Its database is used in the Firefox add-on Forecastfox and works fine. There you can find data for pressure, humidity, wind speed, etc. as well as radar maps.

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cheesehead (Brainstorm moderator) wrote on the 26 Jan 09 at 14:18
Please add the link to published Google Weather API.

Gnome has been working on a better weather-location system for several cycles now. Their libgweather uses airport locations (because that's where the weather station usually is), but you can always add your preferred location by filing a bug. The bug must include the weather station you want data from.

rouge568 wrote on the 26 Jan 09 at 21:00
For the applet, go to weather.com and type in your city. Select it from the list and you should be directed to a page with the address like http://www.weather.com/weather/local/ABCD1234 Copy that code ABCD1234 and paste it into the area bar of the weather applet, and you should have weather from your town.

HaydenMicallef wrote on the 28 Jan 09 at 00:36
Hey, Great idea.
I live in Australia and the only cities listed are major ones. There are airports near me that do submit meteorological information to databases so and I would love to be able to view this information from the weather applet.


+1 from me

Hayden

AndrewLuecke wrote on the 28 Jan 09 at 04:28
You are talking about ARFOR's/METAR's/TAF's: http://www.airservices.gov.au/brief/html.asp?/cgi-bin/avreq?area=30

Great idea (I think I mentioned it in an earlier idea). And they are quite easy to decode too..

I will repost it as a solution here..

AndrewLuecke wrote on the 28 Jan 09 at 04:29
well.. you can if you wish.

aliam13_2 wrote on the 28 Jan 09 at 20:13
When I tried a certain alpha of Intrepid, the weather applet had alot more locations than usual. It even had my home town which I have not seen in any other ubuntu version (even post versions), I have to use a city that is 26 miles away. Did anyone else notice why this list was so much bigger in the alpha, and what data sources it was using?

dubrict wrote on the 25 Apr 09 at 08:38
The API is very simple. A query to http://www.google.com/ig/api?weather=12345&hl=en returns an XML file with all the information. The location specified in "weather" can be a zip code, or of the form "new york,ny". hl specifies the language, and takes the standard language codes.

I'm not sure how it handles other countries, but I'm certain it does. I'll have to do more digging for the API

divaD wrote on the 7 Nov 09 at 10:28
Since I live in a small community with less than 1000 inhabitants in Sweden for which it actually is possible to obtain accurate forecasts on the Internet, I decided to test the three proposed services. Of those, only Accuweather had any information, so at least in this case I believe that this would be the best choice, provided that it is possible to obtain the information freely from this source, of course.

Another possible source of information that might be worth considering is the Norwegian Meteorological Institute. Please refer to http://www.yr.no/english/ for more information.

divaD wrote on the 7 Nov 09 at 10:39
Unfortunately, I see that much of the information about the terms and conditions and the API for the Norwegian site only is available in the Norwegian language. I will be happy to help translating the text to English if anyone is interested in this. Please send me a private message in that case.


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