Just saw this a while ago on WSVN.com. It’s a very small desktop app that looks to be an RSS reader pulling RSS feeds off the main site along with weather screenshots. It also integrates a larger-sized ‘7 News On the Net’ player though not neccessarily with a clearer stream quality. The app also has breaking news and weather alerts from 7News
Unfortunately, if you want animated forecast (weather maps with loops?) you’ll have to get ‘premium’ weather – $5.95 a month or $37.95/yr. Ouch! Or you can just visit weatherunderground.com and get animated maps for free.
WHDH has had a similar but not so sleek program for a while now, very ugly actually, that’s essentially a glorified RSS reader with community twist allowing users to create a profile and post messages.
Update: I played with the program some and I guess it’s alright. Maybe it’s just me expecting too much 🙂 but it’s not something I haven’t seen before. A huge plus is that it takes very little RAM, about 1.5MB when minimized to show only the small temperature and logo and 10-12MB opened full size. The software itself comes from a 3rd party company called MyWeather LLC which is also the provider of the premium weather add-on. Many other stations use it as well, WPLG and WTVJ in this market.
WPLG’s version of the software didn’t load any of the data on my computer and put this huge ugly temp thing in my task bar!!!
And that’s on a 1600×1200 screen size! Ugly!
Screen shots of WSVN’s desktop app after the jump
Here’s WSVN’s version:
small circle 7 shows the temperature and you can move it anywhere on your desktop and also keep it on top of all applications
When you click on the 7 icon in the task bar this pops up: the little arrows flash when there’s news or weather alerts
That’s the full size probram you get to it by clicking on either News, Severe Weather, Radar, Storm Tracking links.
Strangely there’s no direct link to open 7News on the net.
At least it looks good 🙂
I just downloaded it. Consider me the guinea pig. It really is a neat program, very sleak very neat. It has that quick news and weather update that you would need at the office. I like it alot, and it is something you guys should download! =D
Looks pretty sharp. Looks like a suped up RSS reader — I’m curious how they will use this during storms.
this is better than the “7news desktop community” here in boston. i ended up deleteing it. wsvn is better! 🙂
I like it alot! The story they did yesterday said it would be used a lot durning hurricane coverage. They will provide the latest cone and coordinates as soon as they come out. That all by itself makes it a great tool. As much as it pains me to say this “great job 7”!!!!
i have the wheather bug and i like it. Its really good durning hurricane season. So can someone tell me is it better than the wheather bug?
For you mac users out there, it is not Mac compatible. 🙁
Sad, isn’t it, Brandon, that not ONE local station has a Mac compatible local news/weather app? Not even a Dashboard widget? it SUCKS.
Dashboard widget?
They don’t even have Yahoo or Vista widgets!
I’m not sure if Channel 4 has an app, but 6, 7 and 10 use the same 3rd party vendor for their app …
It’s rediculous! Preposterous! Obsurd! lol… I can go on, but I won’t