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« Previous day (Jun 27, 2004) | Main | Next day (Jun 28, 2004) »
20040628 Monday June 28, 2004

Web Services for Weather!

Some of you may have heard of WxML in the past. This is a different approach.

The National Weather Service is providing weather data now as an XML-based web service! Check it out: http://weather.gov/xml/

The service provides the data using the National Digital Forecast Database (NDFD)'s Digital Weather Markup Language (DWML)

NDFD XML contains forecasts for any combination of the following meteorological parameters:

  • Maximum Temperature
  • Minimum Temperature
  • 3 hourly Temperature
  • Dewpoint Temperature
  • 12 hour Probability of Precipitation
  • Liquid Precipitation Amounts (Quantitative Precipitation Forecast)
  • Snowfall Amounts
  • Cloud Cover Amounts
  • Wind Direction
  • Wind Speed
  • Sensible Weather
  • Wave Heights

(2004-06-28 10:05:39.0) Permalink See also:

Jango Fett arrives!

A few weeks ago, I got YACCO (yet another credit card offer). This one, however, offered a Master Card with your choice of Darth Vader or Yoda, in addition to a free collector's bust of Jango Fett from Gentle Giant Studios.

You may not know, but I'm a HUGE fan of both Jango Fett and Boba Fett! This was a no brainer. I got the Darth Vader card, and this weekend, I got the Jango Fett bust (number 1687/5000)! I was surprised at the quality of it. Most credit card gifts are pretty cheesy, but this bust is substantial!

Here's some more info on the bust: http://www.rebelscum.com/ggMBNAjangofett.asp.

(2004-06-28 09:41:12.0) Permalink See also:

Simplified DocBook for D.C.

Norm Walsh mentioned in his blog that the folks at Idealliance will be using a subset of Full Docbook, that will be very similar to Simplified Docbook, for the XML 2004 papers this year.

That's great news! I've driven the adoption of a variant of Simplified Docbook for our support documentation on SunSolve. As Bill Joy has said in a Fortune Magazine interview,

"The hardest part isn't inventing the solution, but figuring out how to get people to adopt it."

With the fathers of XML and DocBook, and the members of various XML committees all working here at Sun, I am really surprised that we don't have more everyday folks in the business adopting XML. Imagine the power of data/content reuse and exchange if XML was mandated for use across Sun! Add to that the ebXML Registry and Repository...

Lauren Wood, conference chair, has more about the new conference DTD in her blog.

I can't seem to get travel approval these days, but I'm going to XML 2004, even if I have to pay my own way. It's too important to miss. Hopefully a number of folks from the DocBook TC will be there, so we can have a face-to-face meeting. I also understand that Jirka Kosek will be presenting a paper on Indexing in Docbook, and Norm will be presenting a paper on Extreme Docbook!

(2004-06-28 09:26:11.0) Permalink Comments [1] See also: