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Dark Sky developers launch Forecast, aim to bring weather predictions to your favorite app

Dark Sky developers launch Forecast, aim to bring weather predictions to your favorite app

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forecast.io on iPhone
forecast.io on iPhone

The developers of Dark Sky — the short-term weather app that tells you exactly when it's going to rain — have released a new, more powerful version of the service called Forecast. Initially released as a web app, the company also wants to have Forecast's data powering a slew of other developers' weather apps as well. Forecast offers improved short-term predictions, seven day forecasts, and reports on up to 100 years of a location's weather history. The free web app works on all desktops, tablets, and smartphones, and it's more capable than Dark Sky in most areas. "We've gone to inhuman extremes to make Forecast.io feel like a native app," developer Adam Grossman told The Verge.

For now, Forecast only lacks Dark Sky's ability to send push notifications, but the developers plan to offer that as a premium service within the next month or two. However the new focus on data seems to shift the company's interest toward providing backend services for other developers rather than building its own robust weather application. "We've been talking to some of our favorite weather app makers," Grossman said. Dark Sky's predictive abilities have already been available in other apps such as Check the Weather, but using Forecast's new data, the company hopes to fully power a community of apps. Grossman thinks the prospects are likely, "I think we're going to be really successful on that front."