Insights For Success

Strategy, Innovation, Leadership and Security

Environment

Weather Trends 360 predicts weather 1 year out

Apple, Environment, IOS, Management, Risk Management, Strategy, Travelling, iPad, iPhone, technology, websitesEdward Kiledjian

My local news station weatherman seems to have a 50/50 success rating predicting the 5 day forecast. Imagine my surprise when I learned about a company called Weather Trends International that claims to provide weather prediction for up to 365 days into the future.  At first I thought this was another fly by nights hocus pocus type website, then I checked out their client list. It includes names like Walmart, Loblaws, Target, Coca Cola, Heinz and many more.

The prediction

As expected, the mechanism used to predict the weather is a closely guarded secret. What we are told is that they use a constantly refined trade secret algorithm (using statistics and cyclic patterns) and the results are checked by a team of meteorologists. For what it’s worth, the company claims an accuracy rate of 80%.

Interestingly, they provide predictions for over “720,000 locations, all 195 countries, islands and territories”.

Many professional meteorology services have contested that this is a “forecasting service” and say there is no scientific evidence that proves WTI can predict weather that far ahead.

How to use the predictions

Weather Trends International is quick to point out that the best way to use their service isn’t to determine the absolute weather 6 months out but rather to determine the best time period for your planned activities. If you’re planning a trip to sunny Mexico sometime next July or August, then you can use the tool to determine which week seems to be the hottest and driest during your window of opportunity.

The mobile app

They now offer a 0.99 IOS app that is basically a mobile front end to their free website. Interestingly, they seem to listen to their users and in newer versions of the app have added requested features like UV Index, sunrise/sunset, etc.

 

Considering the purpose of the app, I would love to a historical summary of the weather (like what WolframAlpha currently provides). Coupling the historical with their prediction would make an excellent combo.

Some of the features like animated world maps are well done but the overall app interface seems a little clumsy and not well thought out (like a date slider which doesn’t work all that well on a small iphone screen).

 This is the main screen   

This is the 10 day weather forecast screen

My tests

I tested the app using 3 week long prediction periods at 30, 60, 90 and 120 days out. My unscientific testing showed that their overall period prediction seems to be close enough.

Right now they are predicting the first “light snow” for my area on November 20 2011 (Montreal , Quebec). I will see if they hit the mark with this or not.

Who should use this?

Although the 0.99 price is low which makes the purchase decision easy, I don’t know what the value of the app is when the website is free and provides the same information. To make the app truly worthwhile, they need to add some app-only features.

Setting this point aside, this is a cool tool for anyone planning a family vacation or event. Even small to medium business owners, that can’t afford the WTI commercial product but that could benefit from weather predictions, will likely find this useful in their strategic planning process.

 Positives

  • App interface is easier to use than a Safari site for this
  • Many of the graphical features are pretty
  • Simple easy to understand interface
  • Seems to be fairly accurate

Negatives

  • I would love to have the measurement scale change depending on location (Celsius for most locations outside the US automatically)
  • Rethink some of the interface design elements to make them more small screen friendly
  • Don't expect accurate daily forecasts

Cloud computing may be better for the environment

Accenture, Datacenter, Environment, MicrosoftEdward Kiledjian

Open any business magazine and you will be bombarded with the words “Cloud Computing”. It is the buzzword of 2011 and something your company will likely consider for point solutions. In simple terms, cloud computing is computing on demand. Like electricity, you pay for what you use without having to worry about any of the back-end magic (hydro-electric dams, generators, transmission lines, etc). When you flip the switch, the service just works.

Popular Cloud providers are Google (with their Google Apps), Microsoft (with their office 365), SalesForce.com (with their online CRM solution), etc.

Microsoft, Accenture and WSP recently released a report that compared the environmental impact of running your business solutions in-house versus using a cloud-based provider. They found that by outsourcing a company’s applications to a cloud provider, the environmental impact can be reduced by as much as 90% (energy usage and carbon footprint).

Knowing that IT accounts for 2% of worldwide energy use, this may be a welcome revelation to environmentally concerned executives. They identified energy usage savings as follows:

  • Reducing excess capacity (unused capacity)
  • Flattening peak loads
  • Employing large scale virtualization
  • Improving data center design.

Microsoft’s Chief Environmental Strategist (Rob Bernard) has a great analogy.  He compares cloud computing to mass transit. One bus equals 50 cars on the street. Same concept with cloud computing.

An interesting conclusion I want to point out is that the largest customers had the smallest benefits. Companies with 10,000 + users had benefits in the range of 30% while companies with around 100 users saw a 90% environmental impact reduction.

There are other concepts companies can use to reduce their environmental impact while improving productivity such as teleworking. I recently wrote an article about implementing a successful telework program and I strongly recommend you read it.

The conclusion is to investigate where Cloud Computing may fit in with your business plan. Shedding non core responsibilities means you have more resources (time, money and expertise) to concentrate on your core business while outsourcing the non-value generation part. Imagine if each company had to figure out how to generate the electricity it needed? How much value would that sap out of your business?