Pushed out a couple little fixes:
And next up on the to-do list: the iPhone friendly version. Maybe this weekend …
I’ve long been annoyed by the design of nearly every weather site on the Web. Usually, there’s only about three things I care about: the weather right now, the hourly forecast and the forecast for the next several days.
But almost every site spreads those items across multiple pages and gives me all sorts of stuff that’s irrelevant to me. When I plug in my ZIP code to weather.com, for example, the page that comes back tells me the current temperature, the UV index, the dew point, the pressure and the visibility in miles. Some people may find those useful, but not me.
That page doesn’t have the hourly forecast (which is split among 3 pages for the next 24 hours) or the 10-day forecast (yet another page).
So, I designed a weather Web site just what I want on one page:
Data comes from the National Weather Service via their XML APIs.
Obligatory disclaimers: It’s a big buggy, to say the least. I’m cheating a little bit doing a little interpolation with some of the weather data (tho it should be mostly correct for most locations. I think.) The icons are a bit crude (Anyone want to draw better icons? Drop me an email.) And it may fail rather spectacularly with non-U.S. locations.
The one last feature I want to add: the site always defaults to the last location you search for. Maybe tomorrow …
Great graphic on how Americans of all types spend their days from Kevin Quealy, Amy Schoenfeld and Amanda Cox. Right now, 85% of Americans are asleep, 5% are watching T.V. and 2% are at work.
As part of the National Design Awards, Steve Duenes and I are speaking at 10 a.m. Friday at the Smithsonian Castle. Our panel is Interpreting the Present and the Past.
I’m a little late in posting this, but Amanda Cox had a fabulous graphic in the Sunday Business section this week. She took data on industrial production and showed how it indicates business cycles in the economy. (And my favorite part: watching the industrial production data chase the leading indicators on the final frame.)
After learning that Michael Jackson had been rushed to the hospital after a possible heart attack, we scrambled to find a smart way to show the breadth of Michael Jackson’s career. Billboard’s archive of charts showing the Hot 100 Rankings for Michael Jackson seemed to be just the way to go.
It’s fascinating both looking back at his #1 hits — Billie Jean, Beat It, Black or White, among others (tho, suprisingly, Thriller never reach #1 as a single) — and also how his career compared, on the charts at least, with other artists like The Beatles and U2.
And Tom Jackson — assisted by John McGrath and Andrew Kueneman — took a project that had been in the works for a while to show reader feedback, in the form of reader comments and photos, in an entirely new way.