Monthly Archives: November 2013

Barometer sensor in Nexus 4

n4_barometersensor

One of the things I found interesting about the old Motorola Xoom (one of the first Android tablets) was that it had a barometer sensor. It seemed like a great feature to enable crowdsourcing weather information. As the Xoom faded from my memory so did the notion of having a barometer on me all the time.

Listening to a discussion of all the sensors in the new Nexus 5, I wondered what sensors my previous generation Nexus 4 has. So, I installed CPU-Z and learned the 4 does indeed have a barometer. I haven’t found any app/service that crowdsources barometer sensor data. However, there are a few free Android apps that work with the sensor. I’m trying Barometer Monitor right now.

Forecast.io says I live in the “Middle of Nowhere”

forecast_io_midofnowhere_20131109

You know the saying “stuck in the middle of nowhere”? Well, according to Forecast.io I, apparently, am. Granted, Hawaii is the most remote island populated island chain in the world. And, Honolulu is the most remote major city with a population over 500,000 (ref: ESRI Blog: The World’s Most Remote Island Group: Hawaii?. But, still…

Note: Forecast.io is one of the best examples of an HTML5 site that is has both good functionality and a good user interface design.