Silverlight, Nokia And A Whole New Weather Experience

Look closely at the image above? Do you see it - animated snow falling within the mobile application. Thanks to Nokia and Microsoft technology, mobile users will now have access to a mobile experience unlike anything seen today anywhere. Animated snow falling within the weather application as actual snow in that particular location is falling at the same time.

Today, I will be highlighting recent mobile efforts made possible thanks to Nokia and Microsoft’s Silverlight technology. This story originally broke at MIX08, you can read up on the various Silverlight demos, which partners are using this technology from this link.

As you can see, WeatherBug was given a great presence at MIX08, I believe the event provided a great jumping off point for WeatherBug to present something that will change the way many mobile users perceive weather data on their mobile devices.

How does WeatherBug data work with Microsoft Silverlight?

WeatherBug has taken all that they have learned from their efforts with BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, only to take it to another level using Nokia’s Symbian platform and Microsoft’s Silverlight. New levels of interaction with the data being presented, the ability to see more without leaving one screen for another and of course, animated effects like snow falling and gathering in the app itself.

The WeatherBug interview video linked above will take you to a page where Silverlight is actually being used in lieu of Flash 9 to play the video itself. I have to say, it works really well for Windows and Mac users.

From the very beginning, WeatherBug found Silverlight to be a fantastic instrument for adding more compelling features to their exclusively generated weather data. This has since provided better functionality to the end user, while also giving the company a nice way to better test what the WeatherBug users will respond to and they are really wanting to see from upcoming WeatherBug applications.

So now where does Nokia come into this?

By using Nokia’s Symbian platform, WeatherBug has been able to provide the most compelling weather data browsing experience anywhere. Official reports state that Nokia will be making Silverlight available to their S60 in addition to their Series 40 devices and of course, Nokia Internet Tablets. So this new experience will become accessible to Nokia users all over the map here very soon.

And because Silverlight allows for a “develop once” type of environment, I imagine we will be seeing access to this innovative Silverlight WeatherBug application on each of devices here fairly soon.

Taking Silverlight applications using WeatherBug data for a test drive.

So how does this Silverlight WeatherBug app work? Can you try it out today without a Nokia phone? The answer is yes, as there are two ways of doing this using Windows or OS X. The first is to try out WeatherBug’s Historical Weather Data With Microsoft Silverlight. The second option, while it may not allow location changes as it is merely an example, can be found here.

I thought Silverlight is to be cross-platform? Where is the Linux version?

In cooperation with Novell, Microsoft has left it to their technology partner to work on this development thru the Moonlight project, which is making significant headway. This has indeed, been given Microsoft’s blessing and I myself am looking forward to continued progress on this front here in the near future.