Weddar Report: iPhone App Is Twitter for Weather
- By Charlie Sorrel
- April 25, 2011 |
- 7:37 am |
- Categories: Software and Operating Systems
Tell us how you feel. Weddar takes weather reporting social
Weddar is a social-powered weather app for the iPhone that gives you more personalized, localized reports than you get from the official services. That might sound dumb, but I have been trying it since last week and it makes a surprising amount of sense.
Think of Weddar, which launches today, as something like FourSquare or Instagram, only for weather. The app automatically geolocates you, and you report the current weather with a simple, easy interface. This not only gives extremely localized weather reports: it also gives you a more subjective view than you get from the numbers.
“In Weddar, someone, somewhere in Montju�c [a hill in Barcelona] will tell you that the weather ‘Feels perfect’”, says Weddar co-founder Ricardo Fonseca, “Another one near the beach will tell you that ‘Feels good but windy’, because weather conditions really are different in a same city.”
You can also request a report from somewhere far away. Tap and hold on the map somewhere other than your current location and the app will submit a weather request. Another reporter in that place will see it and give a report. So you could check if the beach up the coast is too windy before you head off for the day. Reports fade in opacity as they get older, before disappearing completely.
But why would you bother? Because Weddar turns reporting into a competition. You earn points for “checking in” and then you are charted on a leaderboard. This currently appears to show only the top 50 reporters worldwide (I’m currently number 26!), so some finer-grained groups may be necessary. You can also share your reports on Twitter and Facebook, so next time you want to Tweet about all the snow that’s dropping on your part of town, you can do something constructive at the same time instead of just whining.
Right now the Weddar universe is sparsely populated, but will obviously get more useful as more people join. Best of all, it’s free, and you can go grab it from the App store right now, with an Android version on its way.
Weddar product page [Weddar. Thanks, Ricardo!]
Weddar app [iTunes]
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