Alaska Weather Apps: Few and Far Between

In reviewing weather apps most major markets are covered by a variety of different weather apps. The surprising exception has been Alaska where you’d imagine there’d be a whole lot of initial installs from a place where weather truly matters. My guess is that relative to the population you’ve gotten developers (as opposed to San Francisco where you have SF Climates – where when all is said and done you’re only talking about a couple of degrees and fog here or there). For those that do want regional Alaska weather it looks like KTUU is it.

If any new Alaska weather apps hit the market, let me know. I’d love to review them.

Favorite Weather App: SkyMotion

Hourly - SkyMotionSince I’ve been reviewing weather apps I often get asked what my favorite weather app is. For the past few months I’ve consistently used SkyMotion. I like the hourly local weather as well as the mix of weather vs. time views on a single app page. It’s cleanly designed. It’s functional.  Most importantly, it’s standing the test of time against dozens of apps I trial week after week.

OSHA and Terms of Service Guidelines

OSHA's About AppThe U.S. Department of Labor is offering the OSHA Heat Safety Tool app and includes a short, but interesting quasi – terms of service within its About This App page.  The app itself is a tool to help spot signs of heat illness, so as a precaution, the app tries to outline the limits of the advice it gives to users who might use if for medical direction.

There is basically a very short sentence or two letting the user know location and “information” is only used for app development purposes.  This feels light and short of the standards the state of California is trying to push.  I imagine the government bureaucracy is a formidable place and this looks like a case in point that not every government branch app initiative is even aware of emerging privacy standards between states and federal agencies.

 

Yahoo! Weather or Weather Forecast – which came first?

There was something oddly familiar about the app Weather Forecast (Daily Weather Forecast – Air Pollution Index); the icons looked like I’d just seen them somewhere.

Take a look for yourself:

Clouds - Weather Forecast

Clouds – Weather Forecast

Clouds - Yahoo! Weather

Clouds – Yahoo! Weather

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The windmill icons also are a little too close to Yahoo! Weather as well.

Windmills – Weather Forecast

Windmills - Yahoo! Weather

Windmills – Yahoo! Weather

Terms of service and privacy policy – include both in app

Very few weather apps bother to include either a terms of service (TOS) or a privacy policy within their app.  From a consumer perspective, I look for a privacy policy that spells out what the app as well as company making the app intends to do with the data it collects from my phone or that I volunteer.  If it’s a terms of service, I might quickly scan it to understand what I’m entitled to from the service if I pay for it as well as what the company considers their versus mine (example: every photo on your phone is now ours and we can stick it in ads and not pay you for it).  Because we’re often talking about data here, there can be a fine line between what’s considered a privacy issue and a commercial declaration.  Both TOS and privacy policy documentation should be easy to find within the app.

I tend to look for a distinct document for both although it’s ok if there’s a single document where there are clearly marked sections speaking to privacy versus terms of use.  There’s no reason these text files should not be bundled into the app as opposed to linking to a site.  A site can change, which is convenient to the developer, but it’s not fair to the consumer if terms change on a web site but you customer is actively using a past version of the app that at the time of download had different terms.  Bundling changes into each version assures that your app and your terms remain in sync per version.

Most developers are unaware of the moves by California’s Attorney General to enforce consumer privacy protection around apps.  Assume that all apps distributing through iTunes are technically doing business in California.  Here is a PDF of best practices by the AG.

PortlandWeather_TOS_and_PrivacyPolicyLess than 20% of the weather apps I’ve reviewed have included either a Terms of Service or a Privacy Policy.  As an industry, it means a lot of individual companies and developers are not starting out with a consumer mindset.

There are apps that stand out in terms of what I’m categorizing as “customer friendliness”.  KGW.com’s Portland Weather app tucks a TOS and privacy policy in it’s About US page.  I would consider drawing inspiration from best practices seen in this app.  Now that I said that, don’t go copy it.  Get yourself some good legal advice customized for your service, make the design work for your app, but pay attention to how the Portland Weather app does a great job at making the documents legible and easy to find within the app.

The need for contact – app customer support practices

The majority of weather app developers do not include basic company contact information within the app. Assumptions on why it’s important:

  1. As a customer, it lends credibility to know you can write into the maker of a product and let them know about your experience. Companies without contact information run the risk of being perceived as a scam.
  2. There are a lot of great customers out there. Great as in people who’ve used your product, have goodwill towards what you’re doing and want to point out a problem because they’d use the product more if they could.
  3. Attitude and way a company responds. Good customer support is an opportunity to improve. A company with no customer support links suggests the developer has a longterm approach that won’t factor in customer feedback. Let’s just say it’s probably not agile and questionable how competitive the app will remain in light of a loaded category where there are other companies that do listen.

Donation avalanche – app revenue through giving

There were a number of great designs within the Utah Avalanche Center app. Most developers likely won’t consider donations as a viable business model beyond goodwill. In the case of The Utah Avalanche Center, donations drive 2/3 of the organization’s funding and allow services such as mobile services.

What the UAC does well is clearly state why the organization relies on donations and then creates an easy way to complete a transaction. You’re holding in your hand the end result.

photo 1

The contact section of the app is also well done. Icons reinforce contact information text and what to each outreach channel provides.

photo 3

Last, the camera feature is clever in how it records slope, location and timestamps when the photo was taken. It crashed the app every time though effectively making the feature useless, so I have to ding the app in speed (for crashing) until that gets resolved.

When size matters – when is an app file too big?

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I reviewed the CAMPER Weather. Have a Camper Day! app and saw John Stewart potential in the commentary.

For those of you that have never heard of Camper, it’s a shoe company out of Spain. I get why brands like Oakley see the branding potential in creating a surfing app to promote their surfing product line, but the Camper app doesn’t make any such connection.

Why the long app title? No idea. It doesn’t help that a lot of worldwide consumers may not have heard of the company. The bigger problem however is file size. At 141MB, it’s larger than Apple’s Music app and Safari. By asking users to download a massive weather app that requires WIFI, aren’t you cutting down the potential audience on cell networks that may have gone for a trial run but were prevented because of file size?

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