Slashdot Mirror
Google Pulls Access To Unsupported But Popular Weather API
New submitter drsmack1 writes with news of some bummed out programmers losing access to an undocumented Google API. From the article: "The curious popularity of the Google Weather API appears to be coming to a close. The search giant never officially supported the feature, but developers have used the unofficial feed available from the iGoogle homepage. With iGoogle now set for deprecation in November, developers are reporting that the once simple weather API is no longer returning data."
Seems like the sort of thing you could replace with a tiny bit of XSLT.
Why didn't I think of that!
Sure: http://www.wunderground.com/weather/api/
Even though the API was admittedly unsupported it was a core part of iGoogle and was used by many people as part of embedded scripts. While Google has admirably given a nice long notice for terminating iGoogle, it would have been nice had Google given at least a wee bit of warning of its abrupt termination of the weather API. Even its termination was not clear since the returned error page was an old page dated 2009 that seemed to imply that the user had done something wrong. It wasn't until I saw others encountering the same problem that I realized the problem was not on my mind, resulting in a fair bit of wasted debugging and head scratching on my end.
Is it asking too much of a company whose motto is "Don't be evil" to have given a week or two of warning or at least to have spent a minute or two setting up a meaningful and informative error page? Come on Google, you can do better...
Reminds me of the punchline of the Steve Martin joke "How to become a millionaire and not pay taxes":
First, make a million dollars. Then, tell the IRS you forgot.
Which part of "unsupported" did you not get?
why would anybody use these?
And then complaining when said API disappears? For the US at least NOAA offers a pretty nice REST/XML API that's free and even comes with icons you can link to if building a webpage or app.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Yeah, Google holds the patents (and copyrights!) on weather forecasting.
With iGoogle now set for deprecation in November
That's November 2013.
http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=44.89640&lon=-93.61164939999998&unit=0&lg=english&FcstType=dwml an XML link as an example.
You can get it as KML as well whatever that is.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
Beliving in global warming doesn't automatically make you a "fanatic." Stop being an asshole.
Well goody for them...
Why?
My point remains, don't look to Google for long term anything.
The more pertinent point would be 'don't use unsupported APIs regardless of who provides them'.
Another alternative: http://developer.yahoo.com/weather/
Which part of silently dropping undocumented and unsupported service is "being evil"? Now if the motto was "Be nice" that'd be something to expect and it would be on par with "Dear trespassers! Please note that you will have to find another shortcut as I'm fixing this hole in the fence next week. I apologize for inconvenience".
There's difference between deprecated andundocumented.
If you can trust the global warming fanatic that runs weather underground.
Hmm... Seems you are right:
"Temperature right now: 75 degrees. Forecast for tomorrow: 500 DEGREES! Wear a life vest, because the ice caps are gonna melt! Timber wolves are going to be hunting you because of atmospheric flash freezing! WATCH DAY AFTER TOMORROW SHEEPLE!!!! "
How much trust do you need to put into the weather forecast? If it's off by a few degrees, well, it's not rocket science anyway.
My point remains, don't look to Google for long term anything.
Don't look to any service with no service level agreement for long term anything. If you absolutely must have long term support, don't use anything from anyone that doesn't explicitly offer long term support.
Are you saying that the weather data supplied from thousands of user across the world to Weather Underground is suspect because the whomever runs the site accepts the science behind anthropogenic climate change? How does that NOT make you the fanatic?
There is no such thing as "a tiny bit of XSLT".
Well, global warming is real, and we are fucked already, it is just a matter of how fucked we want to be, just somewhat, or really hard. Given how much is happening even in countries not as backwards as the US, I guess we want to be really fucked.
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
This is why Google+ failed.
Oh dear...can I live in your world, too? In mine we need to wait until a service closes it's doors to tell if it failed or not...on a more serious note, why do you consider a service with 250M accounts (150M of them active) as failed?
Do you even try to research things on your own or just like to make up shit wearing that tin foil?
The desktop weather gadget uses msn services:
http://weather.service.msn.com/find.aspx?outputview=search&src=Windows7&weasearchstr=90210&weadegreetype=F&culture=en-US
Easily verified by watching traffic and changing your zip code
The name, of course being derived from X, the roman numeral 10 and SLT, a grain of salt.
METAR data from airports is one possibility. I use it to style a website so the background changes to match the weather, with a thermometer and windmeter showing the respective info, clouds in the background and so on. It requires a fair bit of regex work, but it's usable. Resolution of one hour.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
Lets say for the sake of argument it is real. People seem to think that driving a little less, getting 100mpg, slapping a bumper sticker on their car, and yelling at people on websites is going to help.
Largest decrease in co2 emissions in 30 years happened last year. Nearly 20% (putting the US back at 1990s levels). Know what happened? We are switching wholesale over to natural gas. Its spot price on the market went bellow coal. That and the upcoming regulations on mercury emissions made it a no brainier for our power companies to switch over.
If you think for one second though that china and large swaths of the '3rd world' are going to do the same thing you are dreaming. They are just getting started. They are busy getting themselves un-dependent on the rest of the world to live.
People think what they do helps (and yes every bit counts). But what you do is so minor and insignificant compared to the real polluters out there. Did you know most semi-trucks are exempt from any sort of mpg rules? Why? They last 15-20 years they cost 250k+ and have that exception written into law. Same with most coal fired plants. Look at the exceptions in the law and you will see who really is the polluter.
I can explain what happened.
I work for Weather Central in Madison, Wisconsin. In December we were purchased by the famously rich Rothschilds of Europe and they brought in a charismatic new superstar CEO. Seven months later, they cashed out to the tune of +$15 million, selling to our historical nemesis and competitor, Weather Services International.
WSI is owned by The Weather Channel Companies, which is an umbrella company for The Weather Channel (duh) as well as Weather Underground, which they recently bought. (TWCC is owned by NBC Universal, which is owned by Bain Capital and Blackstone Group. That means I now work for Mitt Romney.)
This consolidation is complete. Over 90% of the worldwide weather services business is now owned by TWCC, which used that considerable power to negotiate a contract with Google. The contract stipulates that TWCC (and their sub-companies) will provide data to Google, and in turn Google would eliminate its weather API, because TWCC has its own weather APIs (more than one of them now, in fact). The API at my company is cleverly named DataCloud: http://datacloud.wxc.com/?vs=0.9.
This consolidation is definitely good for TWCC, which will never again have to worry about competing in the marketplace. The monopoly will last until a disruptive technology displaces it in a couple decades, if it's anything like other stale monopolies. Unfortunately, it is definitely bad for the other 7.01 billion people on the planet, who now only have one source for weather data.
It doesnt have the soil? Massize fertilizer injections? Do you realize you dont know what you're talking about?
Canada already has vast amounts of farmland, but with a typically shorter/earlier growing season than what you see compared to farms in the US, particuarly in Kansas/Oklahoma and further south. That's one reason the US has such a high output, is we're situated so perfectly situated. Its not like you go BAM permafrost no growth! There's plenty of rich soil to be used all across canada, or other northern climes, that simply isnt very productive because the season is too short. With a longer season, those "unviable" areas (due to season, not soil) become viable cropland, and other areas that already grow crops benefit from the longer season as well, boosting output.
You, the guy who said we're fucked, and the moron that downmodded my original post, all don't know a damn thing about farming, soil, and possibly even biology. Its not farmland farmland farmland PERMAFROST! Besides which, just being permafrost doesn't mean the soil is bad; it's just frozen. The are millions of acres of soil that is just fine for agriculture, but just can't be effectively used because of climate. As the temperate zone shifts, the prime growing areas will too. But there's nothing wrong with the soil itself. (and fertilizer isnt bad in itself, excessive amounts or uncontrolled/unfiltered runoff is)
Damn non farming idiots.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.