Mobile Phone Weather Products

[Eric Sipes]

Hi,

I've started readying all of my gear for the fast approaching 2009 storm season. I've got everything in check except for a little bug on my cell phone. Almost any and all Hi-Res images (i.e. Satallite, Radar, Forecast Maps...) show up all distorted. It looks like the "small" images were just blown up to Hi-Res size. Does anyone know how to fix this? I had this problem on my old phone as well but, it was a rare occurance. My new one can't seem to get anything but this.

I have a Motorola Z9n if that helps any.

below is an image from http://mobile.srh.noaa.gov/ depicting how it looks.


Also, are there any other mobile sites that have good data availible you would reccomend?

-Eric

 

[J Kinkaid]

http://www.weathertap.com has a really good mobile site and to fix your problem you need to unzoom

 

[Eric Sipes]

I'll check out the site but trust me, it's not zoomed in at all. Pick up your cell and go to http://mobile.srh.noaa.gov/ and check your local radar site, choose "Hi Res" image. Then, tell me what you get. You should be able to see about 6 counties on your screen. You can then scroll around from there.

-Eric

 

[Dean Baron]

I would recommend MyCast. It comes with radar, satellite, and infrared maps (but they only come in three zooms, national, regional, and local), along with warnings/watches/advisories plus lightning and forecasts. I think its about $5 a month and I use it just about every day.

 

[Jeremy Jones]

I would recommend MyCast. It comes with radar, satellite, and infrared maps (but they only come in three zooms, national, regional, and local), along with warnings/watches/advisories plus lightning and forecasts. I think its about $5 a month and I use it just about every day.

I use the Blackberry Curve and it has Mycast on it. Not a bad little application.
Especially when I'm away from my laptop.

 

[ssimmons]

Eric,

I think your problem has to do with displaying pages in the default mode versus desktop mode. Those terms may not be right, but most smart phones have this setting that can be changed. When in default mode, the browser makes all images fit the screen of the phone, whereas in desktop mode, the image is shown as it is and you can pan around on it. After looking at the manual for you phone, it looks like you can change some browser settings. Try looking for the display mode in your settings. It looks like you get there by opening your browser and going to Options->Browser Setup->Preferences. Try that and other options to see if you can find this option on your phone. You may not be able to change this on your phone. If not, then all images will be resized to fit your screen.

With WeatherTAP Mobile, we designed it to work around these limitations with the cell phones. With it, you can specify the actual image width and height you want the images to be. You can also zoom in and pan around on the images you load. If your not a member, you can sign up for a free two week trial at www.weathertap.com/freetrial to see if it is something you might like. WeatherTAP Mobile is included with your regular subscription.

 

[mrobinett]

I have to back up Weathertap Mobile, its great! As a long time subscriber to Weathertap, I had been anticipating a mobile app for my Blackberry, Weathertap Mobile fits the bill. All the features I wanted were there and it updates automatically.
Mike

 

[Andrew Herron]

I use Opera now on my AT&T Fuze (HTC Touch Pro on Sprint) so I can view full screen sites. Before that I used Wunderground's mobile website.

http://m.wund.com/

You can also give just the lightweight site a try but your miles may vary.

http://www.wund.com/

 

[Jeff Snyder]

I have a WAP/WML page designed for cell phones operated through my website... Products include BR1 radar, wind profilers, surface obs maps, vis sat imagery, etc... See http://wap.tornadocentral.com .

Note that this will only work on phones with browsers that will decode WML. This ends up being most phones, with a noteable exception of the iPhone.

 

[Eric Sipes]

Good News!!!

My default browser still has the same issues but, I went and got Opera Mini and problem solved. Everything works great. Thanks Andrew for mentioning Opera and thanks to everyone else for your input. I would strongly recommend (I spelled it right this time ) Opera/Opera Mini to anyone with similiar issues or, with phones not capable of viewing full screen sites.

-Eric