Snippet: Forecast ☇

I’ve been a fan of Dark Sky and apps that use its data (like Check the Weather) for awhile, and the folks behind it launched a new web site/web app combo, located at simply forecast.io. It looks and works great on desktop browsers, but the real magic is adding it as a web app on mobile devices—it acts and feels pretty darn close to a native app on the iPhone to the point that it has become my primary weather app (not counting the Notification Center pull-down):

About a year ago, we released a little app for the iPhone and iPad called Dark Sky, attempting to do something new and interesting for weather forecasting, a field we think had become pretty stagnant. Approaching 100k sales, it’s been fairly successful; however, we’ve been continually asked for more: international support, longer-term forecasting, an Android app, and so on.

Rather than cram these things into Dark Sky, we decided to do something grander: create our own full-featured weather service from scratch, complete with 7-day forecasts that cover the whole world, beautiful weather visualizations, and a time machine for exploring the weather in the past and far future. You can access it from all of your devices, whether it be your laptop, iPhone, Android phone, or tablet.

Clearly the Dark Sky folks have found out that their API is even more valuable than the app itself and Forecast is a great way to promote some of the functionality. If you have an iPhone, I encourage you to check it out simply to see what could be developed for the iPhone without the App Store.