[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III Themes and Apps] Rogue9:
In Black

For those that don't know, weatherpanel gets it's data from a weather.com XML feel. I am subscribed to this service as well and I got this email notification today...

The important and alarming part I have highlighted

Quote:

Dear XXXXXXXXX:

We are contacting you because you are a registrant for the weather.com XML Data Feed (the “Service”). We are providing you with IMPORTANT INFORMATION REGARDING THE CONTINUATION OF YOUR ACCESS TO THE SERVICE. Your registered application may or may not currently be in compliance with the terms of our agreement (please refer to the developer SDK containing the license agreement – see link below). We are in the process of updating the Service to programmatically validate certain licensing conditions. Beginning May 6, 2008, if your application is not in compliance with these terms, the Service will no longer return data to your application.

The complete terms and conditions surrounding the use of the Service can be found in the developer SDK along with graphical icons that are necessary to represent the sky conditions associated with our current conditions and forecast data, and our logo. This SDK can be accessed by clicking on the link below.

http://download.weather.com/web/xoap/sdk.zip

You may update your user profile or change your product selections at any time by logging in to the weather.com registration system with the following information:

Sign-In Page: https://registration.weather.com/ursa/xmloap/step2

E-mail address: XXXXXXXXXX

The Service includes:

• city search capability for all locations covered by www.weather.com;

• location specific information necessary for data presentation;

• current condition information (Observations) for the selected location; and

• up to five (5) days of forecast information (the current day’s forecast plus four additional days of forecast information in consecutive order beginning with tomorrow’s forecast) for the selected location in ten (10), 12-hour day-parts.

VERY IMPORTANT

YOU MAY NOT USE THE SERVICE TO CREATE WEATHER AND WEATHER-RELATED PRODUCTS TO BE DISPLAYED ON HANDHELD OR OTHER WIRELESS DEVICES.

YOU MAY NOT USE THE SERVICE IN CONNECTION WITH AMONG OTHER THINGS, ANY BROADCAST TELEVISION, INTERACTIVE TELEVISION, CABLE TELEVISION, TELEPHONE OR DSL SERVICES, DIGITAL CABLE SERVICES, HEAD-END-IN-THE-SKY SATELLITE SYSTEMS, RADIO, PRINT PUBLICATIONS, DIGITAL BROADCAST SATELLITES, TELEMATICS, TELETEXT, VIDEO-ON-DEMAND, KIOSKI DISPLAY, OR OTHER PUBLIC OR PRIVATE INFORMATION DISPLAY UNIT, WIRE-LINE TELEPHONE, OR AS ALL OR PART OF ANY STREAMING VIDEO OR AUDIO CONTENT OR FOR DELIVERY BY ANY MEANS OTHER THAN STATIC DISPLAY ON A TRADITIONAL WEB PAGE ON YOUR WEBSITE OR DESKTOP APPLICATION.

YOU MAY NOT USE ANY LATITUDE OR LONGITUDE DATA ASSOCIATED WITH A LocID OR ZIP CODE EVEN IF SUCH INFORMATION IS RETURNED AS PART OF AN XML DOCUMENT FROM THE XML FEED.

USE OF THE SERVICE IN VIOLATION OF THE TERMS OF YOUR AGREEMENT WITH TWCi MAY RESULT IN YOUR IMMEDIATE TERMINATION AND PAYMENT OF MONETARY DAMAGES TO TWCi.

To comply with the terms of the Agreement, Your Website or Desktop Application must, among other things:

• display weather data for no more than three (3) locations at a time;

• adhere to the data request rules, usage rules, and refresh rates outlined in Exhibit B of the Agreement;

• clearly separate TWCi data from other data within a single visual element;

• identify that the weather data comes from TWCi by incorporating The Weather Channel logo containing an embedded link to the www.weather.com home page (one of 5 Required Links);

• provide four (4) promotional links, selected by TWCi and provided through the Service on each data call, back to www.weather.com for additional weather information in close proximity to the TWCi Content as set forth in Exhibit B of the Agreement; and

• be free of charge to your end-users.

If you cannot meet these requirements but would still like to use our weather data, please contact our business development department at 770-226-0000.

Thank you for your continued support!

Your friends at The Weather Channel Interactive, Inc. (a/k/a weather.com)

Check out other tools by The Weather Channel at http://www.weather.com/services.

This is a transactional/relationship message that you are receiving because you registered for XML Data Feed by The Weather Channel. Click here to access your profile and products you are registered for at weather.com.

If you have any questions or concerns about how we use your personal information, please read our privacy policy. We welcome your feedback.

Copyright © 1995-2008, The Weather Channel Interactive, Inc.

The Weather Channel Interactive, Inc.

P.O. Box 724554

Atlanta, GA 31139

It sounds like only a matter of time before weather.com discovers weatherpanel's xml feed ID and blocks it from downloading updates...

The good part is that the feed weatherpanel uses is specified by the validity check on the server... but this is still going to cause a lot of headaches.

Thought you guys should be made aware of this.

I'll comment more on this later, but it's late, and I'm tired.

P.S. I think this is a shady under-handed tactic on weather.com's part. The quality of their service and programs has always been questionable and this just further solidifies those feelings of negativity towards weather.com (the weather channel) as a company as a whole.