Google Weather Service And GMail Improvements

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."

Comments

Re:Looks nice

[I Be Hatin']

Fahrenheit is an arbitrary scale, for pretty much all scientific uses Celsius is the scale.

...and Celsius isn't arbitrary?

OBTW: ever heard of the Kelvin scale? Or does that not have "scientific uses"?

Re:Looks nice

[I Be Hatin']

Isn't that a more stupid and complex measurement, not particularly useful for any kind of scientific reference, than just using pure water?

I fail to see how the phase changes of water being calibrated to (32,212) degrees is any better or worse than having them at (0,100). They're just arbitrary values in either case (unless you're trying to ascribe some numerological significance to them...).

Now, if there was a ubiquitous formula that was made simpler by the fact that water freezes at 0 instead of 32 (e.g. you can drop a constant term), then I would buy that Celsius is better for scientific research. But until you can show me one...

Re:Looks nice

[I Be Hatin']

At least the Celsius scale... delivers practical values that don't require too much thought to interpret. If it's 0 deg C or lower then it's freezing, if it's above that then it's not. Water boils at exactly 100 deg C. Etc, etc.

Again: what's so special about 0 and 100? In day-to-day life, I don't really care what the freezing point of pure water is. All I know is that if the thermometer is below N, then it's really cold out, and if it's above N', it's really hot, etc. Ascribing any significance to the exact values of N and N' is pointless and -- dare I say -- unscientific.

Not to mention that 1 deg of change in C is equal to 1 deg of change in K, the SI unit for temperature, which makes Celsius far more practical a unit of measurement to any scientist than Fahrenheit will ever be.

So why not work in Kelvin in the first place?

Having said that, I can understand your resistance to change though...

I think you misunderstood my position. I don't really care which system is used. I'm used to Farenheit, but I can adapt to Celsius quickly. My complaint is with people who say that Celsius is somehow "better" or "more intuitive", when in reality both are just arbitrary scales.