I havn't been really keeping track, but could this somehow be integrated with the openstreetmap stuff that is supposedly going to be intergrated with wikimedia at some point? -- - bawolff Caution: The mass of this product contains the energy equivalent of 85 million tons of TNT per net ounce of weight.
On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 9:07 AM, Brian McNeil<[email protected]> wrote: > If you go up a page from Milos’ detailed list there’s a world map with > temperatures. This looks very like the old WeatherChecker output but I think > it’s really overlaid temp. numbers. The whole thing looks really good, but > pictorial form is what most people are used to digesting weather data in. > > > > How hard is it to convert these detailed figures into a map system that uses > image maps and can be drilled down into a more local form? > > > > I’d expect to be able to go from World to one of our defined geographical > regions (eg Oceania or Europe) and from there down to a country level (eg > UK). > > > > Part of doing this would be altering the maps in some way to roughly mark > out the areas that can be drilled to. Take a look at the BBC news page’s > regional map for how they’ve done this. At regional level you’d want maps > with country outlines, hover text would then be good to see where the final > drill-down would go. > > > > Is this do-able? Are these sources as free as we need? Is there scope for > cross-project collaboration? For the latter, it’d seem reasonable that > Wikipedia have the ability to look up temperature history and say which day > in a year was the hottest/coldest. For Wikiversity the data is a historical > record for any research purpose they can come up with, and we have a need > for it as news – if we do build a long-term record then there’s our ability > to analyse it for trends and such. Wikipedia with weather data is one > feature of Wolfram Alpha knocked off. Instead of fancy algorithms that > aren’t very good at parsing English queries you’d have lots of curious geeks > writing programs to query the data. > > > > There’s quite a few potential uses for Wikinews having this data available. > If you have an earthquake or tsunami then the weather conditions are going > to influence relief efforts. I’m sure people could come up with other > examples. > > > > This sort of begs the question, where should the data be held? We’re going > to want it cross-wikinews – do we need weather.wikinews.org? (Or even > weather.wikimedia.org) If so, and we have a good bot for it, could a WMF > server have the spare capacity to run the bot? > > > > Lastly, one of the things I always find useful in a weather map is isobars > with front markings. Rarely seen on TV now, you can quickly tell what > weather is going where and do your own half-day to day forecast. Do we have > enough data to produce these at any particular level of detail? > > > > > > Brian. > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Paul Williams > Sent: 18 June 2009 15:36 > To: Wikinews mailing list > Subject: Re: [Wikinews-l] Weather bot > > > > Hi Milos, > > > > I have a toolserver account I am willing to run the bot on for the English > Wikinews. We shall have a chat at some point over the weekend - can I try > and catch you on IRC? > > > > Regards, > > > > Paul W > > User:Skenmy > > 2009/6/18 Milos Rancic <[email protected]> > > I finally made a weather bot according to my wishes. Its characteristics > are: > > * It gathers information from wund.com, but it is possible to make > plugins for other sites and protocols. > * It may gather data from all over the world. > * It may be localized in any language. > > The only problem is that one iteration takes at least 5-7 minutes just > for weather in Serbia and just for Wikinews in Serbian. Probably, I > would be able to run enough of instances for covering weather in > Serbia for all Wikinews editions (or, questionable, to run enough of > instances to cover the whole world for sr.wn). That means that I'll > need your help (people who are able to run bots as cron jobs), so we > may cover the whole world for all Wikinews editions. > > My other ask is related to programming the bot. I prefer to make the > bot as a collaborative work because it is not reasonable to expect > maintenance of one relatively huge project by just one person. I may > make subversion repository at SourceForge (or at one of the servers in > the company where I am working). If anyone of you are willing to join > me, let me know that. Also, all other ideas are welcome. > > You may see its output here [1] (in Serbian). > > [1] - > http://sr.wikinews.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B2%D0%B5%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B8:%D0%92%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BC%D0%B5/%D0%95%D0%B2%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%B0/%D0%A1%D1%80%D0%B1%D0%B8%D1%98%D0%B0 > > _______________________________________________ > Wikinews-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l > > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikinews-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l > > _______________________________________________ Wikinews-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l
