Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

From tableteer, Foreca Weather Applet.

5-day weather forecast for any location worldwide.

Choose from over 140,000 hand-picked locations or simply retrieve the forecast for your current location via GPS.

http://tableteer.nokia.com/tableteer...147_foreca.jpg

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

somewhat interesting, but it cuts of "today" at a odd time...

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

It's well made and I would use it if it weren't for OMWeather...

I have gotten quite used to seeing my familiar 7 days of weather at the bottom of my home screen with updated Now: information.
Besides, Vlad and his crew have been active participants in our forum and respond quickly to our input and concerns.

Who is responsible for "Foreca" and are they members of the forum?

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

Judging by the name and icons... I would say Foreca makes this applet. It's listed as being made by a "commercial partner", so Nokia probably paid them to do it. Which means not much support, and no community interaction. I haven't even tried Foreca, but I prefer OMWeather, too :-P

Hmm... with the new station support, perhaps someone could make a package for grabbing data from Foreca?

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

Hmmm, commercial partner.....

I smell a Fremantle....

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

i wont be using this because it doesnt have the detail and options of om weather, and it doesnt fit in with the rest of the applets...not to mention there being a damn logo like an advertisement

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

Well that's quite a good feature. With that said it could be added to OMWeather quite easily too.

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

OMWeather can already use the GPS

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

The funny thing was a Foreca guy, advertising this applet on russian n8x0 forums :) He said that "OMWeather doesn't have his city in it's db, and Foreca does!" but he didn't say what city is exactly missing. Ah, those funny commercial partners...

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

My city is included, making it potentially more accurate than OMWeather. I ran some tests. But it is difficult to 'flip' it around; I tend to click on the wrong thingies. Its not finger-friendly.

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

I gave it a try, but (frankly) found it lacking in functionality. I've never seen a map, weather report, or much of anything not refer to my city, so I was well covered there. But the fonts were small, and there weren't many options (it took me quite a while to figure out how to switch to Fahrenheit). omweather has about a billion knobs (US measure, and 3 days of weather is all I need) -- but Foreca couldn't be changed to handle just three days? Foreca generally fell short in readability, obviousness for configuring, and flexibility.....

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

Yup, and it doesn't look like OMW has any commercial plans for using that info in the future.

A little investigation of Foreca finds that this "Commercial Partner" is also in bed with Google. It pro'ly won't be long before adverts get pushed to the tablet along with the forecast.

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

I use Foreca too (and I have indeed tried OmWeather and do like it more).
But Omweather is a nice big weather thingie - I just wanted a small app justt o show me basic temperatures for a 3 cities - foreca does its thing.

For cities not in the list - I think you can put in the zip code and it will fetch the city locations - not too sure about it though.

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

I like it! I use it now instead of omweather. It is much simple and so convenient. It does not popup useless full screen window when you touch it, so you can move applet around the screen. GPS feature is great.

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

You're talking like OMWeather forces you to use 11 day forecast with combined view. There are options to show 1 day. Unwanted pop-ups is an issue, we're thinking of it. But please, don't call Foreca 'simple and convenient', I'd rather call it 'poor functionally'
P.S.: BTW, I've just dragged around OMWeather applet and it acts fine, no pop-ups. Anyone faces that problem?

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

heh, my only problem with omweather is the use of weather.com as its source of data.

i would love to have a look at providing a alternate data source...

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

i prefer omweather - but i also like vanilla ice cream - who cares what i like
but what i would like is the ability to add radar to the display- i would donate/pay for a weather app like that!

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

I name things as I feel. Foreca is much better. It looks better and more professional. It does not have as many options as omweather, which is indication that authors were thinking about usability, instead of dumping a full load of checkboxes into users throat. But it is all could be Ok, except one thing, which I hate - full screen popup with "details". Personally I do not need any details. All I want is a small simple forecast, which Foreca is doing perfectly. If I were Nokia, I would include Foreca into the next OS release.

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

And I'm sure their commercial partner could make that happen once they figure out how to generate revenue with it. :eek:

***

What steams my clams about some commercial partners is:
Where have they been for the past 3 years?

Instead of providing apps for a device when the apps are most needed... like when the devices are first rolled out and then growing their business along side of this new community, too many times it seems that these partners step in only after a market has been developed by a good FOSS program.

I am not saying that "cherry picking" is the case here but, the OMW crew gets my support just out of general principle. :cool:

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

Do not want!

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

I constantly get OMWeather popping up the details page when I just meant to wake up the tablet's screen, or something else. I wish the details screen would only pop up if you tap-and-hold the applet for a period of time, or something...

Just to be clear, I love OMWeather. One of my favorite apps for the tablet.

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

Well, that is what the "commercial" part of commercial partner is all about.
Most of the time unless there is a market, there is no commerce to be had from that. Not all companies are as big as say Google to be able to create a market. They only jump in once there IS a market.

That's not a reason to always blame them. In fact instead of being anti to these commercial companies because they were nowhere to be seen for the last 3 years, I think the community should be welcoming of them as well as other open source partners so that we have more of a ecosystem in the next 3 years.

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

Yeah... I've had that happen as well. It's rare--but your suggestion wouldn't ruin anyone's experience. I'd like that implemented.

My other annoyance is OS2008 related with home apps, though--nothing that I think the OMweather guys can do anything about: apps move around the home screen much too willingly if I'm sliding my finger across the screen. I preferred the old OS2006/OS2007 method of locking down the locations of the home apps and making you CHOOSE to orient them. ...but this is irrelevant to this thread and to either weather applet, per se, except that they're home applets and relegated to this abuse from OS2008. :)

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

Hi, I wrote the Foreca applet and just to let you know:

This app was a quick test project for Foreca to get an idea of what it would be like to develop for Maemo. No money certainly exchanged hands, but since Foreca has had commercial ventures with Nokia, we are registered as a commercial partner.

It's been nice to read comments from happy users and improvement ideas from others. I've been reading this forum a long time now and if we're able to allocate more resources for development in the future, I'm hoping to write something here and maybe get some interactive feedback from you guys. We're not a big bad company ;)

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

This was a refreshing surprise! I'm glad you've come across the thread and decided to reply back. I also hope that you don't take criticism too personally. We're all spoiled critics. The OMweather guys have been at it for quite some time and it shows--they've made a quality product. I hope that you can take to heart and keep the features that have been complimented by the users as well as consider the criticisms as constructive.

I for one look forward to seeing what you do with this application. Despite the commercial tinge of the watermarking and closed-source nature of the application, I'd like to see where you go with this. Different implementations of a good home application like a weather widget serves to provide diversity to people who might otherwise prefer one or the other implementation.

Thanks again for posting into the thread and letting us know that you do read the comments! Be well!

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

Nice to see you here :)
I wanted to ask, if Foreca's DBs are accessible for third party developers? (some XML output or something else)

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

No blame... and not anti.

I would love it if a commercial partner stepped in and provided apps for things not covered well already.

I also realize that being there in the beginning is no guarantee either. Wayfinder was... yet they have provided little support that is specific to the tablet. Instead they just crammed a square peg in a round hole by providing a port of an app developed for other devices. In 3 years time they have offered only minor, cosmetic updates.

I also said in my original post in this thread that the Foreca app was well made and that I would use it if it wasn't for OMW. :)

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

Thank you! Nice work. I would advise to do not jump into a feature race. Keep it simple.

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

In fact adding functionality to switch cities is making applet too complex I think :)

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

It would be simple to make almost everything configurable with a text file that specifies some default themes for users to choose. More advanced users could edit the numbers (colors, positions, sizes) directly. Maybe this would be good for a possible new version? Graphics can also be changed, actually that already works. They're stored as PNG files in the tablet.

The actual code is very short and easy to modify for any home applet. Sadly I can't publish it but I'm planning to make some unrelated homescreen applet from scratch as open source.

As for free weather information we have some but you'd have to ask sales, see "contact" in corporate.foreca.com. They're friendly and happy to help.

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

This feature will be made in version 0.22 of OMweather

https://garage.maemo.org/tracker/ind...id=93&atid=420

Vlad.

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

Why are you and OMWeather developer not working together?

What are the + and - of each of these applications? Perhaps food for a wiki entry.

No offense, just noticing...

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

Nice applet indeed. I dropped OMWeather because of it's "hey - I think I can do anything" approach. Fullscreen details were the final nail.

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

Just wondering... I've used both of the apps, but does anybody else notice a big difference on the actual DATA - at least for me in Helsinki, Finland, the Foreca gives a lot more usable/accurate forecast. And that's still the main thing with weather applet - doesn't matter which UI I like, it's the information that matters!

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

Not saying they shouldn't work together, but I like a little diversity and would like it if they remained different applications to see where the divergence might produce a different kind of application to do the same thing--maybe better for some, maybe not so good for others, but then at least almost everyone could be happy with either.

I like the fullscreen details, actually, but I can understand the preference for not having that. What would you prefer it did if you pressed and held onto a date? Maybe that could be added and a preference could be selected of whichever behavior you prefer to see?

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

Simple - just like in Foreca applet.
There is no excuse to eat more space than the applet itself uses.
I know - configurability of OMWeather makes it probably impossible but I like Foreca applet's way.

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

What do you mean 'simple?' Explain for those of us that haven't used Foreca or that maybe don't quite understand the ambiguous use of 'simple' as a description of what you want it to do.

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

Ok - applet itself occupies some space on the screen.
So it's nice to stay within this and only this space with controls and configuration. No additional windows - applet changes it's face. It's all within it's space and as I said - when size is highly configurable - this kind of behaviour looks rather impossible to apply. This means "simple" for this kind of things at least for me.

The worst case scenario is (imo) applet setting via control panel.
Maybe because applet for me means something like "almost application" - something tiny.

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

Sounds reasonable if it's done right.. what about resizing, though? That might be a problem, if you have this applet that can resize and it's much too small for configuring? Maybe that's why the "Applet Settings" from the Home screen is a much more appropriate choice, then.

Re: Take the weather with you with Foreca Weather Applet
 

Applet settings - definitely - It's the best way and could be the only one especially if desktop could be switched back to os2007 behaviour with it's dedicated edit mode (I hate when my applets overlap because of unintentional finger dragging).
As for resizing - I've had it on my mind when I said about configurable custom views etc.
IMHO if something is done right - It'll fit a large number of users. As for configuration - You can always find someone who will be dissapointed because of lack of this or that but going that way will certainly increase number of people tired with so many options.