Dark Sky update time!

A few things (this update has some images, which don't seem to get sent with the update emails. So be sure to click the link to check it out on the website)...

1) We're excited to announce that we're bringing on a third fella, Jason LaPorte (see attached photo). Jason has years of experience making computers do awesome things. And he'll be making sure that our system is robust, stable, and won't go down just when a storm is about to hit you. Yey!

2) We've attached another teaser screenshot of the iPhone app. It's starting to really come together.

3) In the next couple weeks, we'll be starting to distribute beta versions of the app to those of you backers who opted for the beta reward. We'll be contacting those folks with more info in the not-too-distant-future.

4) We've been testing the senz umbrella. Good news: It totally stops the rain from falling on your head. Even better news: Look how sexy it makes one look?

Dark Sky update time! We've been hard at work on both the interface and the backend infrastructure, but we wanted to highlight two things:

1) The iPhone interface. You've seen the radar animation on the iPad in our original Kickstarter video, but now we'd like to show you what the app is starting to look like on the iPhone. We've also made some neat changes to the precipitation graph that we think make it clearer and easier to read. Check out the video of it in action here: http://vimeo.com/34575091

2) Now that the backend weather prediction magic is farther along, we've decided that we want to open it up to other developers. So we've created a short-term weather prediction API that we hope will be available around the same time the app comes out. If you or someone you know is a developer and you want to get in on a closed beta, let us know! We've written up a draft API spec here: http://darkskyapp.com/api/

Oh, also! We'll be sending out emails in a few weeks regarding t-shirt sizes and whatnot. So be on the lookout.

-Adam and Jack

It's a Thanksgiving Miracle! Over the weekend we surpassed our funding goal, thanks to all of your ludicrously awesome support.

Over a thousand of you pre-ordered a copy of Dark Sky. The fact that you were willing to drop cold hard cash on an unfinished product (even though many of you don't even have an iOS device, or live outside the United States) is absolutely amazing. Jack put together an outtake reel from our Kickstarter video that I think properly expresses how we feel:

http://vimeo.com/jackadam/whaaaaa

But we've still got a couple days left!

We have been inundated with requests over the past month for an Android version of Dark Sky. Hundreds of people (many of them backers) have contacted us wondering when we'd bring Dark Sky to their phones. The thing is, we're iOS guys... we've never developed Android apps, and neither of us has an Android device. Our plan was to start with the iOS version and use it's success to branch out to other platforms in the future.

But here's the deal: If we can get to $45k in the next 2 1/2 days, we'll use the extra funds to bring on an Android developer to work on the Android version starting from day one. How's that?

-Adam

Since launching the project, we've had a number of people come up to us and say: "Hey, that graph is sexy, but sometimes I might just want a quick text description of what the weather is going to do over the next hour."

For a while now, we've pondered that very problem. The thing is, a picture really is worth a thousand words. How do you boil down a squiggly complicated precipitation projection into a single sentence?

We've been working on it, and we think we've cracked the problem. The app can now generate text along the lines of: "It will start raining in 8 minutes, and stop 15 minutes later."

Check out the image below for some examples of actual output from this new system.

(So far, we're not quite sure how to best incorporate this text into the app. That's a problem for another day!)

So we passed $10,000 today... thanks to all our backers for getting us this far!

Since launching this project, we've had a lot of people ask us how Dark Sky works. The answer is simple: Evil voodoo magic.

Just kidding. We've written a blog post explaining some of the behind-the-scenes technology:

http://blog.jackadam.net/2011/how-dark-sky-works/

Enjoy! And make sure to keep spreading the word about Dark Sky. Especially to all your friends in those crappy-weather areas (I'm looking at you, Buffalo).

First of all, thanks to all you awesome backers! We've just about reached the 10% funded point and things are really ramping up. Be sure to tell everyone you know (friends, family, therapists, that cute guy you see on the subway every day) about us!

Secondly, I'd just like to leave a little anecdote here:

I got married this past June. We decided to have the wedding outdoors, on the banks of the beautiful Connecticut River. Fearing rain, we got a big ol' tent to house the reception, but we really wanted the ceremony outside overlooking the river and were hoping we could keep the rain at bay with happy thoughts and magical incantations.

Unfortunately, I woke up the day of the wedding to find grey skies... Grey skies that gradually gave way to light rain... Rain that they forecasted would last all day.

Every time the rain would die down, I'd get hopeful, only to have that hope dashed with the precipitation's return. As the time of the ceremony approached, we had to make a decision whether to keep everything under the tent, or go ahead as planned. Everyone told us not to chance it and just have the ceremony under the tent.

Dark Sky saved my wedding day!

-Adam