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Google Weather Service And GMail Improvements

Posted by Zonk on from the good-money-after-good dept.

Philipp Lenssen writes "Google has added US-only weather forecasts to their web search. Type e.g. "weather palo alto, ca" (zip codes work too) and you get a small illustrated weather forecast on top of the search result. (Yahoo has been providing a similar service for quite a while.) You can also send your query as SMS to 46645 (GOOGL), as the official Google blog reports." Relatedly, Shachaf writes "Looking at my GMail account, I see that Google has added two new features: integration with Picasa and plain HTML support. Now you can 'Log in to Gmail directly from Picasa and send the photos from your Gmail account', and view your email from any web-browser."

6 of 346 comments (clear)

  1. Google maps by rbarreira · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This should be even more interesting when they integrate it with Google Maps :)

    Am I the only one who dislikes having to do a search to get some information? Of course it can be bookmarked but it just feels a little weird. Maybe it's just a matter of habit...

    --

    The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
  2. Re:so what? by Nuclear+Elephant · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't think that's quite true. You log into a portal and all that crap is surrounding what it is you really want to get accomplished. Google, on the other hand, is a simple and elegant interface where you only get what you ask for. If you're not looking for the weather, it's not going to clutter your screen with it. Now if only they could make my weather report accurate (it says we're having thunderstorms all day, but it's sunny and clear - typical forecast).

  3. In-line signalling can be bad by Eternally+optimistic · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't like the method of well-meaning interference with a search. When you enter "weather east podunk, NY" they first give you the current weather - with very little knowledge that this is what you are looking for. It's just as likely you are looking for historical climate data, or your friend Karl Weather living in Podunk. This clutters up search results, and adds another kind of meaning to the search words. It has all the disadvantages of in-band signalling, and the signalling isn't even defined for the user.

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    What keeps me going is my inertia.
    1. Re:In-line signalling can be bad by NeoSkandranon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If you're looking for historical climate data, "weather" is about the vaguest search term you could pick. No sympathy from me (or i suspect google) if you don't get what you were looking for.

      Google, if anyone, is in a position to say "hey when people search for 'weather' and a city they often want weather reports"

      --
      If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
  4. Google: GUI vs CLI by malarkey · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's interesting that Google is taking the CLI approach, which gives a lot of functionality without adding clutter to the interface.

    Slashdot users, as a whole, might be more comfortable with that approach than the GUI approach, like Yahoo.

    At what point does Google make a Yahoo-style frontend for the "newbie" users, just as an option, of course.

  5. Re:Poor HTML coding by ceejayoz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Google has never shown much interest in validating code.

    Even the Firefox Start page they host doesn't validate.

    They probably save untold gigabytes just by not putting a doctype, type attributes, alt tags, etc.