The last thing I want to do is plan a vacation, only to have it ruined by the weather. I’m not saying that weather is my only reason for traveling, but as someone who lives in a part of the world that sees all four seasons, sometimes it’s nice to get a break from the dullness that is the winter. My Mother is a weather expert it would seem. Regardless of where I’m traveling, she seems to know what’s going on with the weather. Sometimes before I do. A few years ago, I was traveling alone in the southern U.S. I was pretty much just holed up in my hotel room as all I needed was the beach and a break from my life. There was a tropical storm warning for my location, and my mother was terrified that I was in danger.
I called my Dad to tell him that I was fine, as I didn’t want to upset my Mother, but she already knew about the tropical storm and had probably called the coast guard to look for me. All of that said, there’s now an app that can help you determine where to go to avoid the bad weather. A new partnership with Foursquare will soon see the Accuweather iOS app also recommend places to visit, based on hyperlocal weather forecasts.
“Ultimately, this feature will be able to proactively ping users and suggest places to go based on their location at that time and the current weather forecast. Need to wait out the rain? How about the highly rated coffee shop next door. Record-breaking scorcher? The app will tell you that there’s a tiny strip of beach or public pool around the corner.”
While this app won’t necessarily tell you if you should travel to the Bahamas, it will let you know if it’s raining at the beach this weekend, and whether or not you should travel there. This new technology is made possible by a Foursquare SDK and Accuweather provides the following description:
“We are now able to make the weather forecasts we provide even more actionable by tying weather and place together. By embedding Foursquare’s location intelligence into our core products, AccuWeather will be able to keep users safe and more prepared than ever before by giving them a physical understanding of what is around them, especially during times of severe weather.”
Is this something that you would use? This doesn’t exactly have a ton of other functionality, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t. For right now, recommendations will be available only on an opt-in basis. That’s because it requires access to your Foursquare location data in order to make those appropriate recommendations. Given all the concerns around privacy these days, it makes you wonder if this is something that you’ll want to opt into. Is Foursquare using your data in some way to further track you? I’m not saying they are, but it’s important that you read the fine print before allowing an app to track your location. Who knows, we might have another Cambridge Analytica scandal on our hands.