We rarely think twice about the technological complexity behind checking the forecast on our smartphones. But an intricately detailed mechanical watch, like Breva’s new Genie 01, that tells you what the weather will be like? There’s something still wonderfully fascinating about checking a forecast that’s produced and displayed via a series of complex analog mechanisms. More »
What with today’s fancy Doppler radars and forecast graphics and fear mongering, it’s refreshing to get a glimpse of the relative simplicity in man’s very first attempt at remotely monitoring the shifts in Earth’s climate. More »
Like it or not, compared to a DSLR, or even a point & shoot, your smartphone’s camera sucks. They’ve gotten considerably better over the years, and will continue to improve, but their tiny sensors and limited optics means image quality and their ability to accurately process a scene still have a long way to go. More »
Here’s a wonderfully colorful photo project by photographer Robert Weingarten that shows how psychedelic our world can get. Weingarten took a photo at 6:30 in the morning of the same view of Santa Monica Bay from his home in Malibu for an entire year. Even with all that sameness, each photo captures something completely different than before. More »
At first, you might think what you’re looking at is just a cool illuminated wall sculpture. Well it is that, but it’s actually more. It’s actually a weather forecaster with a tangible user interface.
This interactive LED art was assembled by Instructables contributor and Parsons design student Adiel Fernandez. He built the wall unit using a set of three sconces found at CB2, rigged with a digitally-addressable LED scrip, cut into pieces that he placed into the sconces. His original concept was to simply rig the sconce with flickering LEDs to make them look like candles without the inconvenience of actual candles and flame, but ultimately ended up with a much more interactive pieces.
The wall sculpture is controlled by a small acrylic cube with icons on each side. Inside the cube is a gyroscope, accelerometer, XBee radio and lithium-polymer battery. Rotating the cube to face an icon upwards will switch the LEDs between 6 modes, described in the words of its creator as follows:
Here’s a look at the controller cube in action:
And here’s a brief demo of the wall as it lights up:
At this point, the temperature data is hard-coded into the system, but Adiel plans to get it wired up to an internet data source soon. There aren’t too many more details on the build available, but you can see what there is over on Instructables.
College kids: your parents spent a lot of money on that new Facebook-browsing instrument, so at the very least, please don’t use it to shield yourself from weather. More »
If you’ve never experienced serious hail—we’re talking golf-ball-sized chunks of ice (or larger) raining down on you—consider yourself lucky. It can do serious damage to your property, your home, and unless it’s wrapped in this gigantic external airbag, your car. More »
The Weather Channel has dwelt mostly on its iOS apps as of late, but don’t worry — it’s lavishing attention on forecast-minded Android users today. As of version 4.0, the Android app is optimized for tablets and gives a better heads-up for the conditions ahead from your Nexus 7. Other tweaks are more for feature parity, including precisely-timed warnings for significant weather changes, faster radar maps and higher-detail forecasts. Favorites also help with Android-specific widgets. Should you need to know more about the rain or snow than a Google Now card can deliver, the Weather Channel revamp is ready at the source.
Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Mobile
Source: Google Play
The Weather Channel’s app has had you covered on the basics of your local forecast for eons. It ain’t pretty, but if you want to know what the chance of precipitation will be 3AM, it’ll give you a number. Haze takes that raw data and packages it into something simple and beautiful. More »
RoboCat and Taptanium aren’t fans of the typical weather app, which tends to bombard the user with numbers when they just need a heads-up as to whether it’s warm or likely to rain. Its newly launched Haze, then, is the potential antidote. The iOS app initially shows just the core temperature, humidity and hours of sunlight in different sections, with its namesake haze effect giving a clue as to whether conditions are trending up or down. If you need to know more, a tap expands the details, and a swipe down shows a 5-day forecast. There’s also a handful of elements that we seldom see in these apps, such as a direction-relative wind indicator, optional motion-driven navigation and visual themes. RoboCat hints to us that an iPad version might be on the way, although ports to Android and other platforms are more likely to depend on the early response.
We had the chance to give Haze a spin ahead of launch. It’s at least a refreshing take: there’s an appeal to exposing only the weather we want to see, and in a colorful way that never needs more than one hand to navigate. Compared to Apple’s default app, though, it’s at once providing more information and less. Haze is much better at supplying the current day’s conditions, but its forecasts don’t always reveal what’s happening — you’ll know the humidity is shifting on Tuesday, but not the likelihood of snow. Consider the app more of a single-day weather specialist in its current form and the 99-cent price ($3 after a promo period ends) is easy to justify.
Gallery: Haze for iOS
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile
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