Simply Weather Gadget–Quick Fix
28 May 2011Thursday morning I discovered that Google has changed the format of their weather feed to point to new weather icons. The Simply Weather gadget caches these images locally, so that the images can be displayed even when you’re not online. Google’s change breaks this mechanism.
As a quick fix, I’m simply displaying the new images from the feed. The images are not cached locally so if you’re not online, you may get red X’s. This is the best I can do for the moment since I’m on the road. When I get back, I’ll look into a more permanent solution. In the meantime, this quick patch will have to suffice.
On a somewhat related note, I’m amused at the number of emails I’ve gotten about how “urgent” it is I fix this gadget because “I need it”. Interesting how “important” something is and yet it doesn’t rise to the level of making a small donation.
I asked earlier how I might monetize applications like Simply Weather which has had only a handful of donations despite over 400,000 downloads. First, thanks to the few who have donated. You’re a rare breed and are to be commended. As to monetizing, my current thinking is to have you fill out a small survey before being allowed to download. There are several services that provide this feature and it’s easy to integrate into the site. Most of these services leave a cookie with an expiration date so you don’t have to take the survey again for some period of time, say a month.
How’s that sound? A few minutes of your time but no money out of your pocket.
The quick fix is available on the downloads page.