TWC Today Forums
Present - The Weather Channel 2000 => Everything Else TWC => Topic started by: Trevor on July 02, 2012, 02:45:49 PM
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You read right, TWC announced this morning that it will be acquiring Wunderground.
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2143 (http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2143)
Also, mods, if you feel that I posted it in the wrong place, feel free to move it.
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:run:
Uh-oh! That can't be good...
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My gosh, I hope Wunderground doesn't phase out the usage of IATA weather reports and their archives.. those are what I use whenever I make my emulations based off of archived METARs... :hmm:
Also, with the acquisition, they did say that active PWS stations would be linked to on TWC's site.
At any rate though, The Weather Channel itself is only a part of TWCC (The Weather Channel Companies), so TWCC as a whole may not be bad versus only looking at the channel.
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Ugh. Weather Underground was one of the last "real" weather sites. Now it's going to be "Weather Channel-ized." I bet Al Roker has lots of ideas on how to "improve" it. :rolleyes:
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This is a surprise to me. xD In my opinion this is going to improve TWC. I just hope with this purchase they can like... do more weather
and maybe more awesome forecasts?
Like the guy above me said....let's hope they don't come up with Roker-ish ideas.
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"Sure. My wife's not too happy with the sale, for some of the reasons y'all have expressed here. But change is the only constant in life, and after 17 years, I'm ready to be done managing the company. I want to focus on reaching as many people as I can with the message that we have pushed our climate to a new, more dangerous state. We'd better start taking strong action to prepare for what's coming.
Jeff Masters"
One comment:
"Whenever you hear "we've sold the business and I'm excited", cringe and be afraid."
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I believe R.E.M phrased it best, "It's the End of the World As We Know It." (Sighs) I don't see a whole lot of good coming out of this. :hmm:
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I sense that things will remain the same for 1-3 years, but then wunderground.com will simply be turned into a redirect to weather.com
Remember when TWC acquired WeatherBonk in 2007 or 2008? They shut them down in early 2011. That's pretty much how all of these transactions go. Companies usually only buy direct competitors with the goal to shut them down and acquire whatever trademarks and patents they may possess. There's often a contractual agreement to continue to operate the purchased property and to employ the former ownership for 3 years, after which point the owners are released, and the site is shut down.
http://www.weather.com/outlook/weather-news/news/articles/bonkmessage_2011-01-07 (http://www.weather.com/outlook/weather-news/news/articles/bonkmessage_2011-01-07)
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The downfall of the greatest weather website ever invented is happening. It's really sad. I love Wunderground. :cry:
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Omg it's the end of the world
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This is a surprise to me. xD In my opinion this is going to improve TWC. I just hope with this purchase they can like... do more weather and maybe more awesome forecasts?
Like the guy above me said....let's hope they don't come up with Roker-ish ideas.
I agree I think this is going to be great for both sides! If many of you actually read the blog post you would see that Wunderground will continue to operate independently. TWC has a lot to gain from this including ingesting the tens of thousands of personal weather stations around the country which can then be put into their forecasting algorithms. I would love to see HiRad with this data in it!
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I agree I think this is going to be great for both sides! If many of you actually read the blog post you would see that Wunderground will continue to operate independently. TWC has a lot to gain from this including ingesting the tens of thousands of personal weather stations around the country which can then be put into their forecasting algorithms. I would love to see HiRad with this data in it!
Are you serious?!?! Any emulations we make are going to be impossible now because they are going to make their sources PROPRIETARY!
IM JUST FUMED. :furious: See that link to SnapCast in my siganature that some friends and I have worked HARD on! That's going to be all gone now, because of this crap. FML, just FML.
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Why are almost all of you assuming doom and gloom from this deal? :rolleyes: Things like this happen all the time with private companies, and maybe this whole deal won't be so bad after all. At least give it a chance before we all judge that it will be a complete failure.
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I think most of you guys are taking this a little too personally... It's just an acquisition... It's not the end of the world.
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Omg it's the end of the world
I just hope they don't run out of coffee!
Airplane 2: The Sequel (5/10) Movie CLIP - Don't Panic (1982) HD (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gd6aLnPHqeE#ws)
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Why are almost all of you assuming doom and gloom from this deal? :rolleyes: Things like this happen all the time with private companies, and maybe this whole deal won't be so bad after all. At least give it a chance before we all judge that it will be a complete failure.
Sorry I took it too seriously last night... it wasn't my best of days already and this really put me down. But still, I would expect the API to become proprietary since TWC had done that with weather.com a few months back. And this will most definitely make parsing data nearly impossible for things like the 4000 emulator, and other projects we've been working on, since there aren't really any other free APIs out there anymore.
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Hmm... Powerful earthquakes, flooding rains, extreme record shattering heatwaves, out of control wildfires, TWCC taking over Wunderground, may be they were right about 2012. :rolleyes: :bleh:
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I think most of you guys are taking this a little too personally... It's just an acquisition... It's not the end of the world.
Well said.
I think the rather interesting question that comes from this discussion is if APIs for Weather should be free in the first place. In the early days of the net and weather.com it may sense to try and get developers to use your data. The more of it out there, the more your band was distributed. Now it doesn't make sense to do so from a cost-benefit ratio. The web is increasingly becoming the primary source for weather data. Any sensible company would realize that it can't keep offering free services to apps/sites/etc that draw traffic away from their own site.
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Wunderground's default API now requires signup and is capped at every tier possible.. however if you can do some digging, you can find their obsolete and free API. I use their obsolete API currently (my CC pages and my signature here, for example), but if you're good with PHP you can modify how the data is parsed. The only real difference I notice between their newer API and their obsolete API (in terms of the data being parsed) is that the newer API parses the nighttime icons in their CC API, whilst the older and obsolete API does not.
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I sense that things will remain the same for 1-3 years, but then wunderground.com will simply be turned into a redirect to weather.com
:( Hopefully if that happens TWC will let users run a live NWR stream like Wunderground does, or EAS fans (myself included) are going to be angry because we wouldn't be able to get streaming alerts anymore!
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I sense that things will remain the same for 1-3 years, but then wunderground.com will simply be turned into a redirect to weather.com
:( Hopefully if that happens TWC will let users run a live NWR stream like Wunderground does, or EAS fans (myself included) are going to be angry because we wouldn't be able to get streaming alerts anymore!
Many forecast offices broadcast their streams online already. Its a nice feature but sadly one that is becoming outdated and doesn't impact that many people.
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Many forecast offices broadcast their streams online already. Its a nice feature but sadly one that is becoming outdated and doesn't impact that many people.
Really?! Because even on the NWS stream page, a lot of the streams link to Wunderground. :dunno:
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I sense that things will remain the same for 1-3 years, but then wunderground.com will simply be turned into a redirect to weather.com
:( Hopefully if that happens TWC will let users run a live NWR stream like Wunderground does, or EAS fans (myself included) are going to be angry because we wouldn't be able to get streaming alerts anymore!
Many forecast offices broadcast their streams online already. Its a nice feature but sadly one that is becoming outdated and doesn't impact that many people.
You're confusing those with the Wunderground ones. The one you are referring to is the one where ROUTINE product mp3 files are found on some National Weather Service office sites. Full live streams can be found on Wunderground.
Many forecast offices broadcast their streams online already. Its a nice feature but sadly one that is becoming outdated and doesn't impact that many people.
Really?! Because even on the NWS stream page, a lot of the streams link to Wunderground. :dunno:
Yep. He confused the routine mp3 files with the Wunderground stream.