January 2, 2005
It's Raining
In a recent post, I said that the Weatherbug software was full of 'spyware nastiness'. An article on Lockergnome quoting a letter from the the people at Weatherbug.com persuaded me to give it another chance, for the sake of fairness.
The dept of Homeland Security, the National Weather Service (and its NOAA agency), 7000 schools including some of the largest universities in the country, military bases/coast guard bases and the US Naval Academy and over 100 TV stations all have our weather stations and partner with us.
I have been using Weatherbug on my desktop for about 2 weeks now. As noted, the MySearch toolbar, which is a pretty mild form of adware but which does hi-jack your Internet Explorer searches, is now an optional part of the installation.
I enjoyed having the temperature and weather in my task tray, and might appreciate it more if I didn't have a television or radio in my office. After fooling around with the preferences, I was able to turn off the automatic display of the Weatherbug window upon boot, a 'feature' that would have definitely caused me to uninstall.
On the other hand, the application is still very advertiser oriented. Sometimes it opens a browser window and prompts me to select a sponsor. I usually close this window, but I can imagine many people would assume that they had to follow the instructions on their screens.
You can read Weatherbug's claim to be spyware and adware free on their site. They also have an "Internet User's" Bill of Rights. However, the real focus of its application is obvious from their web site navigation. Links to Support, their "not adware not spyware" page and their Privacy Policy can be found in small print at the bottom of each page. Their sales pitch to advertisers is part of their main navigation, and that section includes detailed information about audience sectors and purchasing behavior.
Weatherbug is apparently harmless software and can be convenient. It's business model is selling targeted advertising based on aggregated information about its users. You can buy an ad free version of the service for $20 a year but that doesn't allow you to opt out of user information aggregation. This doesn't make me morally indignant as long as I understand what the deal is, but you make your own decision. Mine is to uninstall 'cause I just am not that interested.
Other ways to get the weather on your desktop:
Commercial (non-free) software:
Wetsock - haven't tried it
Konfabulator and Stardock both have weather widgets. I like and will use the Stardock widget now that I have gone through all this testing.
Web sites
Weather.com - the Weather Channel's online presence
You can pay $20 per year and get a personal Weather.com Gold home page or just give then your zip code and select 'health' as your interest for local weather with ads. Their Desktop Weather application looks like a co-branded version of Weatherbug. You can pay for an ad-free version for $30/year.
Accuweather.com - this looks like a great site-if you are a weather nut. You can pay for a premium or professional subscription ($40 or $150/year for personal users). They also have a ad-supported desktop application.
Desktop Weather Applications:
Weatherbug
Weather.com Desktop Weather
Accuweather.com Desktop Weather
Intellicast - have not evaluated it-claims to be ad free - collects information for personalization
Free Weather - have not evaluated but am not impressed with 'offer' for free search toolbar
It's all a little bit too much weather for me, though! Looking out the window also works.
Posted by Trigger Tech at January 2, 2005 2:02 AM Permalink
