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Posts: 714
Location: Rhinelander, WI | Hey all just wanted to inform you of an awesome feature I just discovered with my Cell phone.
I have Alltel service but I am sure it is offered with other providers.
For the last couple of year I have subscribed to the Weather Channel application. This was great and gave me instant access to forecasts, radar, and severe weather warnings. A number of times because of this feature I was able to watch bad weather come in and be off the water before it actually hit my location. Having instant access to radar on your cell phone is truly amazing. The Weather Channel application cost about $4.00 a month.
My phone (a Razor V3) has been buggy with the Weather Channel the last couple weeks so I started looking at other apps. What I found amazed me even more.
ESPN Out Doors Fishin’ Forecast, all the same weather features as The Weather Channel plus a number of other really cool features including the following:
Barometric Graph, showing past and forecast. About a two hour interval.
Game activity forecast, based on solar and lunar gravity effects and forecasted barometric readings.
Fish Weight calculator
Fish Log
Closest DNR office info for the location you have loaded.
For Severe Weather:
There is a storm watch map that will show watch areas
And I think the coolest feature a Lighting strike map, shows exactly how close lighting strikes are to your position.
This application is $1 more a month ($5.00) than The Weather Channel but I think the added features will be worth it. You don’t need a smart phone or a blackberry for these applications. I think most new digital cell phones can download these app. and use them right away.
Just something I thought everyone needed to know about. I think the safety features of knowing up to date weather is worth it alone. The added fish and game features are also very cool. Any added info can’t hurt, right?
Nail A Pig!
Mike
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Posts: 699
Location: Hugo, MN | http://mobile.srh.weather.gov
Enter Zip Code or City get live radar, Watches Warnings, Surface Obs etc. best part it's free. Well sort of, your tax dollars fund it. |
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Posts: 476
Location: WI | great stuff.....both of them. Thanks for the information.
GotOne |
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Posts: 714
Location: Rhinelander, WI | I have gotten a couple private messages and emails regarding this. So here is a little more info.
As far as I know the ESPN application is only for cell phones. When I was trying to do research on it, I only found info on the wed describing the cell phone app. That address is below.
http://www.digitalcyclone.com/partners/espn/
You need to check your cell phone providers application catalog to see if it’s available.
On my phone I go to a feature called “apps” then to “Access Shop”, then to “catalog”, then to “news and weather” and it in there some place. This would be the same place you go to buy ring tones and games, I believe.
With Alltel you can download a 10 min free sample of the app.
Good Luck
Nail A Pig!
Mike |
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| just be careful when browsing on it..and make sure you close it before you shut your phone. I'm not sure if my phone had closing problems, but my phonebill one month 2 years ago was over 340$ because of that said appplication...apparently you are supposed to completely close out of the application before shutting your phone, because sometimes just shutting it will not close the app...I fought it though, I explained to them that nobody in their right mind would spend thousands of minutes on Weather hahahaha..even me! just a lil FYI...other than that, I watched that app more than TV(not thousands of minutes worth though)..it's very nice haha |
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Posts: 714
Location: Rhinelander, WI | Thanks, Andy I'll keep that in mind.
As an example of what this application can do, I played with it this morning during some storms.
I enabled all the storm notification features of the ESPN app because I wanted so see how it works. About 5 minutes ago I received a text message that there was a lighting strike 15.3 miles to the SE of Rhinelander. Then it asked to open or not open the application, I opened it and it went right to the lighting strike map for the last 45 minutes. It showed 5 lighting stirkes right in the location of Pelican Lake. You cold follow the track of the storm cell as it moved to the north east. If I was fishing the Three Lakes Chain I would have know that in about 15 minutes there was going to be a thunder storm right over my head with active lighting. Looking up would have told me that it’s foggy and rainy and probably that it’s getting darker. But it would not have been enough to tell me to get off the lake until it was right on top of me.
Conversely if I would have been fishing Pelican I would have know that I could wait the storm out another 15 minutes and then been fine to go back out on the water. But there are more storms to the West heading this way, maybe 2 to 3 hours away if they keep tracking the same. Remember all these decisions could have been made from the truck or boat, without having to drive home to check the internet weather.
Nail A Pig!
Mike |
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Posts: 507
| I've used their My-Cast iPhone widget (free) which is pretty nice and has great radar I'll have to try the ESPN version. Weather Underground has the best all around iPhone weather app I have found (free) but I am always looking for cooler and better. |
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Posts: 714
Location: Rhinelander, WI | All those apps are Free with the iphone or a smart phone, but if I am not mistaken you pay a monthly fee for access to the web and all the features correct. When I look at the AT&T web site for comparable phone service with the iPhone it’s almost $50 a month more, now that does include all the features but it’s a heck of a lot more than the $5 the Weather app cost me on my Razor.
The other plus is you don’t need great service to use the app. It’s a quick data dump so if you can hold signal for a short time you can get the dump from the system. To use the internet features on iPhones and Blackberrys you need to have a good strong sustained signal don’t you?
If I could afford it, or needed it for work I would have an iPhone, but right now I just can’t justify it.
Nail A Pig!
Mike
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Posts: 676
Location: Wisconsin | Does anyone own or have worked with any GPS handheld or Locator with XM weather?? I see that the Garmin's have this option.... I think you can overlay radar and information on the GPS map. Anyone have an opinion? |
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| Anyone with an IPhone, have a good weather radar APP they would recommend? I routinely use the internet for WeatherUnderground, WeatherChannel.com and the NOAA but a simple touch of an APP would be better... |
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