Just curious why the change? weather.com has better maps.
I switched because WeatherBug has real-time weather data – and will have access to many more weather stations in the future. Also, weather.com wants nothing to do with developers for the most part. WeatherBug is more than willing to listen to suggestions and actually implement them.
Mike,
I recognize that you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do with respect to your creations. One of the tangible positives of using your WeatherWatcher is that is it so clean. No spyware, adware, malware, etc.
My concern with the switch to weatherbug is that I’ve experienced so many negatives with them in the past, largely related to invasive and pervasive spyware.
Do you have some sort of agreement with them that WeatherWatcher will remain clean? I didn’t the looks (the adware!) of the beta version (6.0.0), so I went back to the 5.6.27.
MQ
WeatherBug has intensive and pervasive Adware / Spyware in their desktop product(s).
Weather Watcher Live does not (and whether it will continue to do so remains to be seen - no offense, Mike, just saying that I cannot predict the future, only you can :P). However, any links in the weather that open a new page will most likely take you to a Weather Bug page / Weather Bug related site. If you prefer to not have anything at all to do with WB / their data / their sites, then you can choose to keep using Weather Watcher only (as EdP has done).
I personally don’t care for WB’s ads / etc so I simply avoid clicking on links in WWL, but I prefer the feature set of WWL over WW, so if something interesting pops up on WWL (such as an alert / warning / whatnot), I manually open either weather.com or else weather underground.
I thought I read someplace not too long ago that WWL had an interface to NWS, what is it used for? Is that only for alerts? Can that be selected for all weather data? Can it be used for the links to check the forecasts?
I think the main problem with WeatherBug is not Adware/Spyware (you can avoid them by not opening the links as was said above) but the inaccuracy of forecasts and weather data overall. At least it doesn’t work for my location, the data is so innacurate that the idea of real-life updates seems ridiculous.
I opt for WW as EdP did.
New version
I´m not satisfied with your change to WeatherBug. I live in Spain and the terriotiral coverage is very poor. If possible I will switch back to previous version.
Weather.com doesn’t really give me a choice – they want nothing to do with Weather Watcher. Why try to keeping working with a company that chooses to stand still?
I don’t need an agreement – it’s my software. They do not tell me what to do with my software, and vice versa.
The adware? None of my software has adware in it. Then again, maybe I am missing the boat on the definition of adware…
Adware, yes. Spyware, no. I’m not sure why people still believe they have spyware in their desktop software :???:
I can access NWS weather station data and NWS weather alerts (US only) through the WeatherBug data feed. When searching for weather stations in Weather Watcher Live, you can see which stations are WeatherBug stations and which are NWS stations.
Yes, if you choose a NWS weather stations.
If using an NWS weather station, the links that go back to WeatherBug.com will also display NWS data.
Yes, this definitely will be a problem for some people. In my case, there are a few WeatherBug stations in between me and the closest Weather.com station.
As people start to setup WeatherBug stations internationally, the weather will be available in more areas. Sometime this summer (the target data anyhow), Weather Watcher Live will be able to display data from personal weather stations – I believe all of which is currently available at WeatherUnderground.com. That’s something that will probably never make it into Weather Watcher.
I know everyone will not want to and/or not be able to use Weather Watcher Live. This is one of the main reasons to keep Weather Watcher around.