Q & A with Kimberley software developer James Swansburg—a finalist in a major Google contest

Uber Weather, developed by Kimberley’s James Swansburg, is a finalist in the 2012 Google Places API Developer Challenge Contest. Uber Weather is representing Kimberley, Fernie, the Ski Industry, B.C. and Canada in a global contest against 27 other countries. The winners may have their applications exposed to millions of people. Here is a question and answer session with James Swansburg:

What is Uber Weather’s mission statement?

To make the worlds best Consumer GIS Data powered visual search, discovery and adventure app, on a foundation of useable, daily content, like weather, traffic, coffee, etc.

What is Uber Weather?

Uber Weather is a simple, spam-free, UI to global data. The layout fills the screen edge to edge with no scrolling. The user controls are placed in a movable, collapsible widget that is context sensitive. UX is maximum content, minimum navigation and zero wasted pixels. It is currently optimized for ski resorts but every golf course, scuba location, hang gliding site, winery, hot spring, hiking trail, bike path, boat launch, etc. will be added. Governments have this municipal data; our task is to make it accessible and useful to consumers.

What is Easy Weather Map?

Easy Weather Map is identical to Uber Weather except it is optimized for local community content. They are hand-coded for the needs of that community.

Why both Uber Weather and Easy Weather Map?

Performance, scalability and optimized UX! Uber Weather is best for global search and trip planning. Easy Weather Map is optimized for local content and business search. Both can be used for everyday weather, traffic, etc. Each website consists of a single static HTML page, with no server side processing, so scaling to a global user base is simplified.

What problem does Uber Weather solve?

Search! Especially Visual Search, with increased consumer confidence in search results via GIS accuracy.

How does Uber Weather solve “Search”?

GIS is the secret sauce. Governments and businesses produce huge amounts of municipal data which has historically been accessible only by engineering folks. Uber Weather & Easy Weather Map bring this data into a consumer UX. It is visually searchable and mashable with other data to give it context and meaning.

How does Uber Weather use the Google Places API?

You can find any city with an Autocomplete Text Search. Results are stored in a history menu and visual icons. Once at the City LOD Tab, there are three ways to use the Places API to search for 100 million global businesses. The result icons are populated on the map and programmatically linked to Google street view.

How does Uber Weather use municipal data?

Uber Weather uses global municipal data to help find individual municipalities, especially small destination towns. For example, global municipal POI data like ski lifts that are always visible on the map, allow casual users surfing the map to find ski towns visually, without knowing the name or keywords. All municipal airports is another example. Easy Weather Map uses municipal data like land parcels to augment search accuracy and thus give confidence that the results are accurate. Or POI data like boat launches to instantly verify if required amenities are available at that destination.

What is unique about Uber Weather?

Uber Weather & Easy Weather Map may be the only apps that combine weather with Google Places, Google Traffic, GIS Enhanced Search and more, in one simple, spam-free, user interface.

What is innovative?

1) Our full-screen user interface with no scrollbars is made possible by not requiring display ads, or other spam, on the screen.
2) Users have a hard time manually setting Google Street View. We programmatically point the SV camera and the Google Places icon. Plus we add a mini-map to help tweak the view.
3) Using GIS for visual search. GIS is truth.

How does Uber Weather plan to make money?

1) Donations – individual and corporate donations. Our goal is to put everyone’s data on the map for free, not just businesses that can pay, every business! The most complete of data.
2) Easy Weather Map will offer “Enhanced Icons” for small businesses.
3) Affiliates – If we believe in the quality of your product, then we will place an unobtrusive ad that is context sensitive and only displays if the user clicks to see it.
4) Sponsorship and partners – complimentary businesses are welcome to participate with Uber Weather and Easy Weather Map as long as they are high-quality and unobtrusive.

What is the market size for Uber Weather?

2.5 Billion people use the Internet; most are interested in weather, not just in their current location but often more importantly in their destination.
See it at uberweather.com