ANNOUNCE: xfce4-weather-plugin 0.8.0 released

[Liviu Andronic]

On Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 9:28 AM, Harald Judt <h.judt at gmx.at> wrote:
> Am 26.07.2012 20:38, schrieb Liviu Andronic:
>> https://code.google.com/p/weather-notification-android/issues/detail?id=72
>>
>
> Since weather-notification-android uses it, I wonder why not use google's
> API? It's undocumented and unofficial, but looking at example data it seems
> very simple and you won't need any documentation to understand it, and no
> license (I think, but did not verify). The diversity of data it provides
> doesn't match that of met.no, and some values like wind may need more effort
> to parse, yet it could probably be used to replace the "current conditions"
> we have now.
>
> Does anyone have experience with it? Why does the author of
> weather-notification-android want to switch from it to another provider?
>
Likely because users are unhappy with Google being systematically
notified of their IP address, but I could ask. In any case, the same
issue would arise for the Xfce plugin: People might not be happy with
the data flowing from Mountain View.

If we are seriously considering Google as a provider, then I would
suggest to give serious consideration to DDG, a privacy-respectful
search engine that incidentally is the default search engine of
Midori. Searching for 'weather oslo' in DDG [1] will essentially
provide the same info as Google (not to mention that it systematically
provides both types of units: C/kph and F/mph). And I've just sent
them an inquiry regarding the existence of a free, public API and its
potential use by our plugin. Will keep you posted.
[1] ddg.gg


> Otherwise, I can only think of making the providers interface pluggable, and
> someone has to write plugins for the plugin, accessing data from a local
> weather data provider perhaps. Seems quite a hassle for such a simple
> plugin, though. And then there's still the problem of APIs requiring
> subscriptions and licenses.
>
That would likely be much overhead for little value. I think we should
find one usable provider (or two) and stick with it.

Regards
Liviu


> BTW: Here's a list of possible weather APIs:
> http://www.programmableweb.com/apitag/weather
> A quick glance at some of them shows that most require licenses or are
> undocumented etc. But maybe someone wants to go through it and finds
> something useful.
>
>
> Harald
>
> --
> `Experience is the best teacher.'
> _______________________________________________
> Xfce mailing list
> Xfce at xfce.org
> https://mail.xfce.org/mailman/listinfo/xfce
> http://www.xfce.org



-- 
Do you know how to read?
http://www.alienetworks.com/srtest.cfm
http://goodies.xfce.org/projects/applications/xfce4-dict#speed-reader
Do you know how to write?
http://garbl.home.comcast.net/~garbl/stylemanual/e.htm#e-mail