Tuesday, November 3. 2009

Impact of Weather.com's Use of Bing Maps?

I really enjoy when tech journalists look at some new "neat" tool and get right down to the nitty gritty of "does it matter to me?" Clint Boulton did just that when reviewing the new Weather.com tool built on Bing Maps (Flash, not Sivlerlight, he's quick to note) that shows future weather (up to six hours in the future) in a tiny (1 sq mile) area. (Chris Pendleton gushes about it here.)

From a developer's perspective, that must be neat, but I don't care so much about that as that this program really works and is useful for me.
...

Will this make me switch from using Google Maps to Bing Maps? No -- I'm very invested in Google Maps' new and emerging features -- but I've always used Weather.com to get my weather updates.

So, there we go, another confirmation that regular folks (ok, he's a techy) don't really case about the source background or API used, just that there's interesting data and the app "works." As Joe Francica notes in today's podcast, all that branding aimed at the consumer matters less and less; API providers and data providers are "back" to selling to developers.

- eWeek