The first thing most people would do when they have a full-day activity outdoors is to check the weather forecast so they can dress appropriately.
Weather applications in smart phones have been helpful to a certain extent. However, most weather apps depend on the same data from the same satellites and weather stations and that is where Sunshine, the crowdsourced weather app, comes in to fill in the gaps.
Sunshine is a community-driven app that allows smartphone users to manually configure the app and set it to their comfort zone as well as contribute to the information on the street-level weather conditions in their location.
Users are requested to provide their location and a temperature range that is within their comfort zone. Thus begins the personalized weather monitoring experience for the user. The app will use all the information provided to deliver weather information that caters specifically to each user.
Each user also weighs in on the weather report in two ways: first is through the barometric sensor on their phone and the second is by manually contributing weather conditions in a location by tapping on the appropriate pre-configured icons. The more a user contributes to the system, the more credibility the user has which, in turn, leads to Sunshine's weather forecasts to become more accurate. Sunshine doesn't do away with the tradition weather forecasts, though. Areas which are not populated by Sunshine app users still have weather information according to the satellite figures.
If you're thinking about how this amazing idea came to life, thank the Sunshine team, a group of engineers, data scientists and designers who didn't get to windsurf one fine Saturday morning and decided to make an app of their own.
They began with an app for beachgoers and decided to expand their horizons from there. On Oct. 6, the Sunshine Technologies, Inc. finally released the fruit of their labor.
Sunshine app is available on iTunes for free.
Photo: Johan Larsson | Flickr
