What’s wrong with MSN weather
Scoble pointed to weather.msn.com. He reckons the only problem with it is lack of RSS.
There’s a bigger problem. It’s Fahrenheit-centric. You know Fahrenheit, that antiquated temperature system used exclusively in the USA, that the rest of the world has abandoned?
Okay, so you can get some stuff in Celsius. The current conditions and brief forecast — that’s all good. Okay so it defaults into F, even for non-US cities, but you can change it to C very easily. It even automatically gives me time local to that city — very nice.
But scroll down a little way, and you’ll find a map, with Fahrenheit all over it. Yeah, they mention it’s only in Fahrenheit, okay, and that seems to be how they got it from the Weather Channel.
So while MSN are hassling the Weather Channel for maps in C or F depending on user preference, maybe they can ask them what the hell happened with the map of Australia and friends? It’s got Hobart, Sydney, Darwin, Perth, Adelaide. Wait a sec, no Melbourne (Australia’s second-biggest city), no Brisbane (Australia’s third-biggest city), no Canberra (Australia’s capital city). They’ve highlighted what might be Cairns, Broome, perhaps Mackay and … oh, somewhere near the Gulf of Carpentaria; perhaps Mt Isa.
Worse, the detailed forecast has half C and half F, and wind speeds in mph. That is not very helpful. To most of us, it might as well be in Swahili.
I might also point out that in the smallprint of the Melbourne current conditions, it mentions the observations are from the Coldstream AWS. That explains why there are currently 37kmh winds outside. Coldstream is not actually in Melbourne, but beyond the urban fringe. Of all the Melbourne AWS locations, it’s probably the worst to try and measure Melbourne’s weather conditions. The one in the city centre probably would have been the best.
I can only hope MSN weather is at least accurate and useful for US users, because it would appear to be next to useless for anybody elsewhere.
It’s even worse in the UK Daniel - metrication (as we call it) is proceeding *very* slowly - my 7 year old daughter is being taught metric units ONLY - and she’s asking what miles are - which are all the road signs are in and are likely to be for the forseeable future. Add to that nautical miles and aircraft still working in thousands of feet and it all adds up to a right old royal mess. Weather forecasts here frequently mention both sets of units both C and F here in Blighty. Except the new BBC ones which are totally inadequate…. and distort the country so much that only the south coast of the UK is visible.
My state rep for the Australian Severe Weather Association which I am a paid up member of is from Melbourne….
In the 1970’s we were taught both sets of units. I never expected to still be using both sets of units in 2005.
Google Maps makes the UK part of the eastern seaboard of the United States which may well happen of course ):
Les
We live near Geelong in the southern State of Victoria, Australia.
Google has given us a weather location to choose from in the personalised homepage, but the projected temperatures make no sense at all. Worse is that if you try to edit the feed, or even to locate it it is just not there. F or C do not seem to be an option. What can I do to fix this?