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Paul

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Blog Entries posted by Paul

  1. Paul
    Following the successful launch of the [url="http://www.netweather.tv/forum/index.php?autocom=blog&blogid=189&showentry=3483"]community groups[/url] with a number of new groups already up and running, a lot of people have been asking how best to let the other members know about their new groups, so I thought I'd share some ideas.

    Firstly, we've made a change to the profile system, so if you visit [url="http://www.netweather.tv/forum/index.php?act=UserCP&CODE=01"]my controls[/url] then select edit profile information, you will see an option at the bottom to enter your community group into it. This will then show up on your profile and also alongside all of your posts.

    Another great way of communicating with other users on the forum is to place a link into your signature to the group(s) you belong to, perhaps with a little bit of information to let people know what the group is all about. We will also be creating some button style images for group users to make use of in their signatures, and of course there is nothing to stop any group members from creating their own group logos etc either.

    You also have the blogging facility available to use, it is now setup so that multiple editors can add entries to one blog, so a community group blog can be setup. You can do this by visiting [url="http://www.netweather.tv/forum/index.php?act=UserCP&CODE=01"]my controls[/url] and following the blog setup instructions.

    We will also do our best to help you promote your community group, whenever a new group is started we'll announce it on the forum, and we will also be regularly featuring groups within the site and forum newsletters which are sent out.

    Hopefully that will be enough for you to get your teeth into, of course it doesn't just have to be forum members you can promote your groups to, if you have friends with similar interests, or if you use facebook or other social networks, why not let them know about your community group too?

    Don't forget - if you would like to set a group up, please drop any one of the team a pm.

    Paul
  2. Paul

    Popups - Aaaarrggghhhhh

    By Paul,

    Hi all, just a quick apology for you - it appears that over the last few days one of the ad companies we deal with (or should I say used to deal with) have, without our knowledge been putting a sneaky popup onto the site when one of their banners shows. The popup was nothing malicious or anything, but as we have a no popup policy on netweather (and always will have), it's obviously not on!!

    As soon as we found out about this last night we pulled all of their ads, and following on from discussions this morning we've made the decision not to use them again because of this.

    So sorry if you got one of these popups, we hate them as much as you and it won't happen again!

    Paul
  3. Paul

    Free Weather For Your Website

    By Paul,

    As many of you will be aware, Netweather's 4web service enables anyone with a website to display a local forecast on it, just be copying and pasting a few lines of code.

    Today, we've added some brand new templates to the system, giving you a greater range of designs and sizes to choose from. Three of the new designs are shown below:

    [attachment=68889:1.png][attachment=68890:2.png][attachment=68891:3.png]

    We're also going to continue to add further new designs over the coming weeks, with at least 2 more being added every week for the next month or so. If you would like to add your local forecast to your website, please visit the 4web page by [url="http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=4web;sess="]clicking here[/url] , it's extremely quick and easy to generate the code, and is then simply a case of copying and pasting it onto your pages.
  4. Paul
    Long range forecasts are always a hot topic, and with good reason - the ability to predict weather patterns a long way in advance is extremely useful!

    From a commercial perspective it can be hugely important, a retailer with a reasonable understanding of the upcoming weather can plan stock purchasing, promotion and staffing levels more effectively, energy companies can plan for demand, event organisers can put contingencies in place and plan around likely conditions, and so on.

    From the public perspective, weather is a popular conversation topic and an important part of our daily lives, so, for instance knowing if it's going to be a hot summer or cold winter can help us plan how we're going to live, plus of course it give us a decent subject for discussion both offline and online.

    The problem is though, that some 'weather companies/forecasters' know that long range forecasts are important to people and a popular topic of conversation, so they use them to get publicity for themselves. For instance forecasts telling of severe storms and snow in winter will get coverage for their business or website, so often they may get issued with that in mind. In my opinion, these sorts of forecasts give long range forecasting a bad name, and responsible forecasters a difficult time as people become wary of trusting forecasts having been burnt by one or more spurious forecasts.

    If you're one of those people who has been burnt believing some of the crazier predictions in recent years, just bear in mind that outrageous predictions of specific events months in advance, or of the coldest winter since records began are likely not to have been designed as a source of information, they're more likely to have been written with creating publicity in mind. So take them with a huge pinch of salt and instead listen to likes of the Met-Office or Netweather and other forecasters who use respected modelling data and/or up front lrf techniques who always present what that data shows whether or not it's hugely newsworthy.

    For me, long range forecasting is still an unproven science with no-one nailing the perfect way to do it yet (and maybe no-one ever will), but the way forward is certainly not to use them as publicity stunts, it's to present things as you see them in a realistic way, whether that means getting on the front page of the papers or not...
  5. Paul

    Winter Forecast Update

    By Paul,

    The winter forecast will be updated onto the Netweather site on Wednesday 26th November, but for the first time ever subscribers to our email newsletter will receive it 48 hours beforehand on Monday 24th.

    The newsletter is part of our MessageCentre service, which enables you to receive forecasts, alerts and weather news as well as our newsletter. It's free to sign up for and all email messages are totally free too. So if you would like to get your hands on the winter forecast before everyone else and haven't registered yet, please visit the MessageCentre at the link below:

    [url="https://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=messagecentre;sess="]https://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=...agecentre;sess=[/url]
  6. Paul

    Winter Specials

    By Paul,

    With winter fast approaching and the second cold spell of the season on the doorstep, there are some great offers available for [url="https://www.netweather.tv/secure/cgi-bin/login.pl"]NW Extra [/url] subscriptions currently to help you stay completely up to date.

    Features within NW Extra include, detailed local and national forecasts, the weather type radar which is updated every 5 minutes and detects whether rain, sleet or snow is falling, a huge range of charts - including exclusive access to the hi-resolution NMM model for the UK, live weather information, strikestar lightning detection, regional snow risk charts, long range forecasts and maps, and much more.

    There really is no better way to ensure you're right on top of the weather this winter! [url="https://www.netweather.tv/secure/cgi-bin/login.pl"]Click here[/url] for more details.
  7. Paul

    Busy Busy Busy

    By Paul,

    The Netweather community has been a pretty lively and busy place over the last few days as snow has been rattling across the country.

    Over the space of 48 hours during the Sunday and Monday (1st and 2nd Feb), over 13,400 posts were made which if you average it out right across the period means there were nearly 5 posts a minute, every single minute! Those who were online during Sunday morning will have seen we took steps to make sure the servers didn't slow down or crash by upgrading them, we were glad we did as that evening we set a new record for the amount of users online with 1233 people all the forum at once, which hammered the previous record of around 670 which was set just a couple of weeks beforehand.

    Over the last few days we have also welcomed more than 140 new members, so welcome to you all - it's great to have you onboard!

    I need to say a big thank you to our team members who have done a sterling job in keeping things well organised and flowing along nicely during this extremely busy time, thanks too to all the members who have contributed to the great atmosphere on here!

    Paul
  8. Paul
    Just a very quick entry - we've put together a selection of the photo's that have been sent into us of the snow this week which you can view here:

    [url="http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=snow-uk;sess="]http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=snow-uk;sess=[/url]

    Thanks to everyone that has sent their video and photo footage in - please keep it coming! Address to send it to is:

    [img]http://www.netweather.tv/images/nwtvemail.png[/img]

    You'll also see on the page that we're on the lookout for some weather reporters across all parts of the UK - if you fancy sending the occasional weather report to us and have a video camera then please drop us a line for more info:

    [url="http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=contact;sess="]http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=contact;sess=[/url]

    Paul
  10. Paul
    Firstly, a very happy new year to everyone - hopefully 2011 will bring everything that you want it to!

    2010 was a very good year for Netweather, not least because we reached a real milestone during December, and that was the fact that 1 million different people used the site for their weather forecasts, discussion, charts, news and info during the month - the first time that we'd reached the magic million mark in a single month!

    Throughout the year we continued to work hard to improve and add to netweather, with a fairly major part of that involving a move to a new server setup during the late spring and early summer which has given us a lot more flexibility and enabled us to keep things running smoothly even in the busiest times.

    Looking ahead, we're all really looking forward to 2011 as we continue to grow and add to the features on the site, plus of course the storm chase to the USA will come round quickly - and with Michael Fish joining us tour 4 it's shaping up to be a cracking chase!

    Behind the scenes we're currently in the process of putting the development schedule for 2011 in place with a raft of new features and improvements planned. Among these will be mobile apps for both Android and Iphone (along with a mobile version of the site), the final version of the V5 radar, more video forecasts and other weather related content, new ski forecasts and snow reports and a variety of other items.

    If there's something you'd like to see on Netweather, or if you have any suggestions on how to improve existing features please do let us know.

    In the meantime though, we hope you continue to enjoy the New year festivities!
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