Browsing Tag: weather

    Miscellany

    Fun = Seeing my Photos in Yahoo’s Weather App

    May 24, 2013

    My first photo showed up in the Yahoo Weather app a month ago, and now I’m up to 11 photos in their system. Some are winter pics, so those won’t show up for a while.

    But I’ve started seeing several of my contributions in the app for different local cities, like these:

    yahoo-weather-1

    yahoo-weather-2

    I still use the Weather Channel app as my main source of info because it can be awfully windy where we live, and that app has hour-by-hour wind speeds … and Yahoo doesn’t. šŸ™ But I do enjoy firing up the Yahoo app every day or two to see what photos are showing, both locally and in bigger cities like San Francisco, New York, etc.

    Cool idea for Yahoo to crowdsource these photos.

    Miscellany

    BAM! Already Got One Photo Approved for Yahoo’s Weather App

    April 22, 2013

    How’s this for a fast turnaround? Less than 24 hours after I submitted a couple dozen photos to Yahoo for possible inclusion in their new weather app, one has already been accepted!

    A little after 6:00 pm tonight, I got Flickrmail from Yahoo letting me know that one image I submitted didn’t meet the size requirements — and the fact that they’d already started reviewing my images made me wonder if any were approved.

    Sure enough, in the list of “Top Contributors” to the Project Weather group, it says that I have one photo in the group:

    yahoo-weather

    And when I clicked that “YOU” link, it shows just my image(s) that are in the group:

    yahoo-weather-2

    That’s a sunset photo from 2008 taken right here in West Richland. Cool! So hopefully someday (soon) I’ll see my own image in the Yahoo Weather app. And hopefully some of the others that I submitted will get picked, too.

    Miscellany

    How to Add Your Photos to Yahoo’s Weather App

    April 22, 2013

    Yahoo launched a new weather app last week, and it’s getting rave reviews. Pretty amazing, because there’s only so much you can do when it comes to presenting weather info, right?

    What Yahoo’s doing differently is crowdsourcing stunning photos from Flickr users. Here are a couple screenshots I took last night:

    yahoo-weather-app-photos

    Every image is credited to the photographer in the lower right, and that credit links to the photo page. (The credit is easier to see in the app than in my screenshots.) So, while Yahoo isn’t paying photographers for these images, they could be sending some nice traffic and exposure. And that leads to the obvious question:

    How Do I Get My Photos in Yahoo’s Weather App?

    1. Sign up for a Flickr account, or sign-in if you already have one.

    2. To have your photos considered, you have to be a member of the Project Weather group on Flickr. Join that group.

    3. Submit your best weather-related photos to the group. Your photos won’t automatically show up in the group. Yahoo has a team of moderators that reviews images for possible inclusion in the Yahoo Weather app.

    In addition, there are some photo-related guidelines you need to know about. These are detailed in a Welcome/Help message that’s posted in the group. The guidelines include:

    a) The photo should depict one of these weather conditions: Clear, Cloudy, Rain, Storm, Fog, Snow

    b) People shouldn’t be the focal point of the photo. If it has people, they shouldn’t be identifiable.

    c) Horizontal-shaped photos should be at least 1024px wide by 554 px high

    d) Vertical-shaped photos should be at least 680px wide by 1024px high

    e) Square photos should be at least 1024px by 1024px

    f) No borders, frames, timestamps, etc. Just clear, unadorned images.

    g) THIS IS IMPORTANT: Your photo has to be geotagged using Flickr’s map-tagging tool. That’s how they know the photo’s location.

    If you don’t geotag your images, you’ll get an error message like this when you try to submit it to the Project Weather group:

    weather-no

    As best I can tell, the title and description of your photo don’t matter. That amazing New York photo above, for example, is titled “Civilizzazione / Civilization” and, even though it mentions New York in the description, Yahoo gets the location from the geotagging, not the description.

    4. You’re done! Sit back and wait.

    Yahoo says you won’t be notified if they choose your photo. It’ll just show up in the Project Weather group someday (Yahoo says it should be reviewed within 30 days, but that group is getting popular so I think it’s going to be longer than that.) and you’ll see “Project Weather” listed on your photo page under the Groups section.

    More Tips for Yahoo Weather Photos

    As I said above, Yahoo is looking for photos of these six specific weather conditions:

    Clear, Cloudy, Rain, Storm, Fog, Snow

    Photos are also being assigned based on time of day. The Help page says

    The frequency at which your photo displays in the app depends on the number of photos in the group that reflect the same weather condition, location, and time of day as your photo.

    So if you geotag your photos, that takes care of the location. If you shoot photos of those six weather conditions, that helps your chances of getting your photos included. And then there’s the “time of day.” My guess is that Yahoo will be looking for photos that match these times of day:

    Sunrise, Morning/Daytime/Afternoon, Dusk/Sunset, Night

    But that’s a guess on my part; Yahoo doesn’t specifically call out how many times of day it uses. But the team is obviously reviewing each image and assigning it to show in the app at certain times of day.

    So that’s it. Pretty simple to submit. But maybe not easy to get your photos in the Yahoo Weather App. I’m not even going to bother submitting any Hawaii photos — I’m sure Yahoo will have a zillion to choose from. So I’ve mostly submitted photos from my hometown area, where there are likely less pics to choose from.

    Hopefully in a month or so, I’ll spot my photo(s) in the app and do another post about that!

    UPDATE: It didn’t take a month. It took less than 24 hours, as I wrote about here: BAM! Already Got One Photo Approved for Yahoo’s Weather App.

    Tri-Cities, WA

    White Christmas 2012

    December 25, 2012

    It’s pretty cool when your first Christmas in a new house turns into a White Christmas. That’s what we’re having today. Snow’s been coming down for about 4-5 hours and is still falling now. Went outside for a bit with Sparky and took about a dozen photos.

    Merry Christmas to all our family and friends everywhere!

    lightning
    Tri-Cities, WA

    Lightning Storm & Sunset

    July 9, 2012

    There was a pretty wild storm that moved into the area tonight, but fortunately it stayed several miles to the west of us. That meant we got to see it, but didn’t have to experience it first-hand (aside from a little bit of windiness).

    It made for some pretty cool photos from the back yard, though.

    Here’s the before photo of the sunset and the crazy clouds that were rolling in.

    sunset

    And then, maybe an hour later, I got lucky and caught a flash of lightning just as the sunset was about to come to an end.

    lightning

    The whole thing was amazing to watch. And we were lucky that it stayed away from us. Heard there were some power outages and such elsewhere in town.

    Miscellany

    First Snow of the Season!

    November 21, 2010

    It’s snowing!!! Look at our front yard:

    snow-1

    snow-2

    Since I really can’t stand winter, this’ll be the only night that I’m excited to see snow. After this, spring and warm weather can’t come soon enough. But for one night, it’s cool to watch and see again.

    There’s actually one other fun thing about the first snowfall of the year: Watching Sparky go outside in it for the first time. He gets this total WTF????? look on his face for about a minute. It’s priceless. That should happen in an hour or two when I put him out so he can take care of …ummm… business.