Social Weather Forecasts
Yahoo! Japan Weather has got something interesting going on. I am quite intrigued. Have you ever been annoyed at the inaccuracy of the weather forecast? I know I have. I make cynical jokes about it all the time. Well, you can now press a button on your area’s forecast page to tell them what the actual conditions are. It’s sort of like voting for reporting on reality, I suppose. They call it “みんなで実況！今の天気” (Minna de Jikkyou! Ima no Tenki), which transliterates as “Everyone Real Conditions! Weather Now.” Ha ha. Let’s take a look. Here’s the splash page for the new interactivity.
Wow! So bright and fresh! So appealing! No login required! I’ve simply got to try it! Ok, that wasn’t my honest first reaction. My honest first reaction was more “whoa – what is all this about?” The promotional page shown here is basically meant to show people how easy they’ve made it to be Yahoo! Weather’s collective collaborative reality checkers. You just click the appropriate button, and the results update. You can use your PC or, as with most viral things in Japan, you can vote using your cell phone. Smart move. I don’t see why this hasn’t been done before. Considering how vastly complex weather systems are, and how much variation there is even in small areas, you’d think this would have been pitched years ago. Read more…
