Ask HN: Please give feedback on simple weather site: weatherfinder.info • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Please give feedback on simple weather site: weatherfinder.info

#21

Post by there » Tue, May 19, 2009, 5:27 PM UTC

disclaimer: i made goingtorain.com

i would make the current day's forecast bigger, since that's probably what most people want to see. the current conditions are not as important since you can easily see whether it's currently raining or whatever without going to the site.

also, what kind of comments are you expecting for visitors to leave? i would think that spammers would quickly fill them up with junk and drown out any useful ones, but i can't really think of what useful comments others would want to read on a weather site.

Re: Ask HN: Please give feedback on simple weather site: weatherfinder.info

#22

Post by JeremyChase » Tue, May 19, 2009, 5:35 PM UTC

there wrote: post #21

disclaimer: i made goingtorain.com i would make the current day's forecast bigger, since that's probably what most people want to see. the current conditions are not as important since you can easily see whether it's currently raining or whatever without going to the site. also, what kind of comments are you expecting for visitors to leave? i would think that spammers would quickly fill them up with junk and drown ou…

Hardly anyone leaves comments. The idea to put comments in came from me sitting at the computer wondering if it was actually raining. I thought it would be nice if I could see if someone locally had said if it was or not(or if it had). Since no-one leaves comments it seems like a pointless feature. Not sure what to do with it now, maybe go look out the window.

Regarding the forecasts.. Yeah, it is pretty weak. I had planned on using Wunderground's API which gives you a lot more data (as I'm sure you know), but the latency is was so long that I just stuck with google. I may switch to NOAA to get more data for the current day's forecast, and current conditions. But I had spent enough time on the site and, was tired of delaying. It is just for fun, afterall.

Thanks for your feedback. Jer

Re: Ask HN: Please give feedback on simple weather site: weatherfinder.info

#23

Post by altxwally » Tue, May 19, 2009, 5:36 PM UTC

It doesn't support japanese. 日本語. But still very good! It does support spanish though

Re: Ask HN: Please give feedback on simple weather site: weatherfinder.info

#24

Post by ivankirigin » Tue, May 19, 2009, 5:38 PM UTC

m_eiman wrote: post #19

sachinag wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FFS people, submit your Please Review as a link, then immediately copy/paste your description as a comment.

I find it convenient to have the description always on top like this. If it's a comment it'll probably end up some way down the comment list and it might not be obvious what it is.

That biases the question. Impressions without a description are more valuable. If you need a description, put it on your site.

Re: Ask HN: Please give feedback on simple weather site: weatherfinder.info

#25

Post by JeremyChase » Tue, May 19, 2009, 5:42 PM UTC

altxwally wrote: post #23

It doesn't support japanese. 日本語. But still very good! It does support spanish though

The site has problems with character encoding.. It is a super annoying bug that I haven't yet found the right answer to. I don't expect it'll ever fully support Japanese, but it should fail more gracefully than it does.

Re: Ask HN: Please give feedback on simple weather site: weatherfinder.info

#26

Post by joecode » Tue, May 19, 2009, 5:42 PM UTC

Where are you getting your weather data? I developed a (non-competing) iPhone weather app, and discovered that the data can be a very tricky matter.

Anyway, looks pretty good. Simple is good. I've also noticed that forecast.weather.gov is a lot nicer than, say, weather.com (no ads and all that clutter).

Re: Ask HN: Please give feedback on simple weather site: weatherfinder.info

#27

Post by thingie » Tue, May 19, 2009, 5:43 PM UTC

I like it.

I would only appreciate to be able to choose another city based on its geographic distance (something like "show a small list of five other cities nearest to the current one"). They might be more relevant for me at the moment.

Re: Ask HN: Please give feedback on simple weather site: weatherfinder.info

#28

Post by eoyola » Tue, May 19, 2009, 5:45 PM UTC

how do you get my ip? gets my lan ip 192.168.99.4 instead of the internet address.

Re: Ask HN: Please give feedback on simple weather site: weatherfinder.info

#29

Post by thingie » Tue, May 19, 2009, 5:46 PM UTC

thingie wrote: post #27

I like it. I would only appreciate to be able to choose another city based on its geographic distance (something like "show a small list of five other cities nearest to the current one"). They might be more relevant for me at the moment.

And I would like to see wind speed in kilometers per hour, not mph.

Re: Ask HN: Please give feedback on simple weather site: weatherfinder.info

#30

Post by JeremyChase » Tue, May 19, 2009, 5:48 PM UTC

eoyola wrote: post #28

how do you get my ip? gets my lan ip 192.168.99.4 instead of the internet address.

Does your LAN use a proxy? I am doing this:

@remote_ip = request.env["HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"]

I'm guessing that your 192.168.99.4 is being sent. The reason I grab this is because lighttpd is acting as a load balancer and I need the IP to find your location. Bummer about that.