Question of Devs from non-dev...

[hardrock1a]

I was thinking about this for a weather app, I am not developing anything, if you like or can use this idea, go for it, if I am nuts, I am sure you'll let me know.

It's severe weather season here and it seems every day there are weather alerts that are in effect for a certain area. Based on the API's and just your general knowledge, would it be possible in a push notification to tell the phone (app), if you are inside these coordinates, display XYZ alert, if not, ignore it.

What I am thinking is of an app for like a local TV station, that way they are reaching their viewers in the affected area, like a tornado warning. Make sense at all?

 

[Dave Blake]

The weather channel app and the weather bug app both do this already.

 

[hardrock1a]

No, not like I am thinking, at least I have not seen it yet. I do admit that I have not gotten weather bug, I will try it.
But my thought is this, one of the local stations has a service that they will call you to let you know that there is a severe weather in your area. Robo call of course. What they are doing is targeting areas that are about to get hit by whatever, hail storm, severe T-storm, tornado. So my thought is the same but as toast notification or an alert of some sort to get your attention, and base it on where that phone is at the moment.

As their service is now, you list your home address and it's just based on that. So if you were to give them your cell number, and are across town, you would get notified your house was about to get hit, which is good if your there. But at the same time, you are left potentially unaware where you are. I am thinking that a push comes down that triggers an alert if the phone is inside of whatever the designated area is.

The Weather channel app was one of the first live tiles I installed and it has never even shown that there is an alert on the live tile.

 

[thed]

I'm still kind of new to phone development but I think you're right about this. Notifications are one way only which means there's no way to update the push server with your new location unless you run the app. Scheduled tasks in Mango should allow apps to do this.

 

[jimski]

Weather Channel has never shown alerts on the lie tile, but Weatherbug works quite well, with National Weather Service alerts in the form of a toast notification plus the time indicator. Guess the only thing missing from your wish list would be for the app to follow you with local weather/alerts. Now that hurricane season has started up again, and hopefully Mango has fixed the live tile issue, may have to switch back to Weatherbug.

Sent from my HTC Surround using Board Express

 

[hardrock1a]

I am from Denver and being this close to the mountains, we sometimes get severe localized weather, hurricane force straight winds close to the foothills, tornados out on the plains, baseball sized hail storms are not uncommon. If a service could send a push to an app that gets more specific than the Nat weather service alerts. if they look at the radar and they see a pattern developing, they could draw an expected path and send out a broadcast giving that envelope, if the phone is inside of that envelop, it alerts you, otherwise, it doesnt. If that makes any sense.