# Dashboard Weather Widget



## PosterBoy (Jan 22, 2002)

Has anyone else's dashboard weather widget become broken?

last time I restarted my machine it tried to load up Vancouver for me and is no longer able. It also lists Vancouver as "Vancouver, Canada(BC)" now instead of "Vancouver, British Columbia."

Odd, annoying.


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## used to be jwoodget (Aug 22, 2002)

Works fine in the GTA right now. Why would you want up to the minute Vancouver weather information? I thought it was just:

nice day: nice day :nice day: nice day :nice day


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## HowEver (Jan 11, 2005)

.


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## Chealion (Jan 16, 2001)

PB - Mine is broken also, as I've had to keep closing it since it seems my widgets lately have a habit of leaking memory like no tomorrow. (For some reason all the widgets I had open that grab information from the internet ballooned to 100MB in real memory each.)

Two days ago I did find that it wouldn't load Calgary, so I loaded Cupertino first and then switched to Calgary and it worked fine. I'm not sure why it's not working.


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## Tiranis (Jun 19, 2005)

Well, it works fine here.. but it did the same thing about one week ago, I just had to wait and got back to normal in about three days, I think. Anyway, the problem here is not the widget itself but the ultimately crappy accuweather API which can't handle the amount of requests and is completely unoptimized and slow. I still wonder why Apple didn't choose some other weather site for the widget.


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## PosterBoy (Jan 22, 2002)

used to be jwoodget said:


> Why would you want up to the minute Vancouver weather information? I thought it was just:
> 
> nice day: nice day :nice day: nice day :nice day


Actually, it's more like :

Monday: nice
Tuesday: rain
Wednesday: nice
Thursday: nice
Friday: rain
Saturday: rain
Sunday: sunny/partly cloudy

more or less, anyway.



Chealion said:


> Two days ago I did find that it wouldn't load Calgary, so I loaded Cupertino first and then switched to Calgary and it worked fine


I've tried having it load other cities first, but it still won't load Vancouver. It will load Vancouver, WA, just not Vancouver, BC.



Tiranis said:


> Anyway, the problem here is not the widget itself but the ultimately crappy accuweather API which can't handle the amount of requests and is completely unoptimized and slow. I still wonder why Apple didn't choose some other weather site for the widget.


I was thinking the same thing. Or something similar, anyway. I think they went with AccuWeather because it's one of few sites that lists weather for lots and lots of places and has a fairly easy to access API.


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## Fox (Oct 4, 2002)

I found the same thing as However; the weather forcast for either Peterborough or Toronto is always off that of the weather channel, which is much more accurate. I don't know why this is; maybe it's an older forecast. For this reason, it's useless, which is too bad.


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## MannyP Design (Jun 8, 2000)

Mine was broken for about a day or so... couldn't get weather for Ottawa and Fredericton. I'm thinking it might be a server issue with AccuWeather.


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## HowEver (Jan 11, 2005)

.


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## PosterBoy (Jan 22, 2002)

This morning it started working again. Seems like it is indeed a server issue.

Out of curiosity, I just double checked the forecast with the Environment Canada forcast, and they're only off by one degree.

Are people really getting forecasts that are that far off?


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## Sakurina (Jun 20, 2005)

Over here, we get completely screwed up results. It once said it was raining and 10° outside when it's really 25° outside and it's sunny.  I really want someone to code a Weather.ca or Environment Canada dashboard widget. If no one makes one, once I get Tiger, I'll check things out. 

edit: Actually, Weather Network makes it quite easy to make a Dashboard widget with its content. They provide a weather button feature which can be customized to your city. Here would be the code for a normal HTML file:


```
<html>
<head>
<title>
Weather Network
</title>
</head>
<body>
<script language=javascript>var LocationID = 'CAQC0759';</script>
<script language=javascript src='http://www.theweathernetwork.com/weatherbutton/wxbutton.js'></script>
</body>
</html>
```
In my case, 'CAQC0759' would be my location ID, in this case, resolving to Trois-Rivières, Québec, Canada. If anyone wants to elaborate on this, feel free.


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## mycatsnameis (Mar 3, 2000)

I know widgets are cool and all (and OK, for reasons that are too long and boring to go into, I haven't gotten around to installing Tiger yet anyway) but if you really want to know what's happening (and what's going to happen) around you, you need a Doppler radar cine loop pure and simple.

Here's a list of GTA links that you can drop into a toolbar folder in Safari or Firefox and open in tabs that will show you what's really going on (along with teh Evt CA 5 day for good measure). By clicking through a few links you can easily customize them for your neck of the woods:

http://www.intellicast.com/Local/US...agery&product=RadarLoop&prodnav=none&pid=none

http://www.intellicast.com/Local/US...p=RadarImagery&product=RadarLoop&prodnav=none

http://weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/city/pages/on-143_metric_e.html

http://weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/radar/index_e.html?id=WKR

http://weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/radar/index_e.html?id=WSO

Maybe someone can write a widget that will extract the cine loop and regularly refresh one of these (the Evt CA radar loops need you to click "play" on them to work though).

I use these to time my bike rides to and from work and, if you use them right, they're accurate down to a few minutes.


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## islander (Jan 31, 2001)

There is a Doppler widget available (got mine from the Apple widget page IIRC). It only works with reporting stations in the US, however. Happily, Seattle radar covers the island where I live.


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## jonmon (Feb 15, 2002)

i leave my computer on for days and after a while the widget stops updating

right now the first day is still sunday


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## dmbfan (Mar 23, 2005)

jonmon said:


> right now the first day is still sunday


I've found the same thing. Strange.


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## sping123 (Mar 22, 2005)

dmbfan said:


> I've found the same thing. Strange.



Same thing over here too


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## bryanc (Jan 16, 2004)

I thought it was broken, and reported the wildly inaccurate data to AccuWeather.com. They sent me an email asking if I was sure I had it set for Edmonton, Alberta and not Edmonton, Kentucky. Oops.  That fixed it.


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## sping123 (Mar 22, 2005)

bryanc said:


> I thought it was broken, and reported the wildly inaccurate data to AccuWeather.com. They sent me an email asking if I was sure I had it set for Edmonton, Alberta and not Edmonton, Kentucky. Oops.  That fixed it.


I have to re-enter my city name to the widget and it works again.


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## allinoneword (May 31, 2005)

thw weather widget is always off compared to www.weather.ca
im picky with my weather. that widget cant be trusted!


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## hoopcat (Jun 4, 2003)

I agree that the acuweather widget is bad. The other day it said sunny and it poured rain. I was not impressed.


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