I generally like to check the weather online every few days so I installed the Weather Channel Chrome application. As you can see from the following screen capture it’s a clean looking application that initially presents a summary of the weather for the current and next day. If I want to know what the weather is like beyond tomorrow or over the next few hours I need to click one of the links and wait for a website page to load. If I want to compare the current forecast with the averages for this time of year, then I need to do a little more digging.
Weatherbug.com has an even fancier application with that uses tab pop-ups but still requires a lot of clicking to get a complete picture of the weather.
A few days ago I found what is for me a truly delightful weather site that instantly gives me a quick overview of the current weather, the hour by hour forecast for the next 6 days, the averages for this time of year, and the weather for the previous 8 days. It can also show the previous and predicted overcast/sun, precipitation, wind speed, wind direction, and other weather data. WeatherSpark presents all this weather data in a graph that’s easy to read.
It even includes a map view showing the temperatures of the weather stations in the area. You can add multiple location and overlay them on the chart. If you want more of a long range perspective of weather switch to the weekly or monthly views as show below.
Time Zones
While I don’t personally have a need to quickly determine the time in a different part of the world for those that do World Time Buddy is a beautiful way to find this information.
Conclusion
InfoGraphic Applications like WeatherSpark, Hipmunk for airline booking, and World Time Buddy illustrate the power of graphical data representations for finding, comprehending, and acting on information. In a world where more and more information is available, infographic applications provide a way of quickly comprehending a data rich experience.
