Hi,
Just stopping by to announce that release 1.2 is now on the App Store.
The major change for this release is that we've re-engineered out push notification system and moved them into our new cloud system, which we're calling Olympus.
This means you no longer need to keep Weather Gods in the switcher :) and can safely swipe it away and notifications will continue to arrive.
Olympus has been built using latest IBM serverless technology so it's quite exciting from a technical point of view. It seems quite robust and reliable, but this will be the first time we've scaled up to lots of users, so please bear with us if there are teething problems.
Please report any notifications which don't arrive at the scheduled times or notifications which seem to have not been translated into your language or are showing the wrong units, time format etc
It can take up to three hours for your notification settings or changes to propagate on to the Olympus cloud.
As ever, if you're enjoying your time with Weather Gods then we would love it if you could leave a review on the App Store please (direct link in settings).
If you have any feedback, need any help etc then please get in touch using the feedback email (also in settings) and we will endeavour to get back to you as quick as we can.
The next release is all about the iPad and using the iPad in landscape :)
Regards
Scott
Comments
Thanks
Thanks for updating us here. It's great to have a developer that stays in such constant contact with the @Applevis community. I'm looking forward to trying out the new push notifications. IT sounds very interesting.
Notification
How do we know when to close the app? I got the new update and want to know when is safe to go to the app switch and close weather gods and still get notification.
Notification
Hi Holger,
You can close the app whenever you like now.
Let me know how the new notifications go please?
Thanks
Scott
Love how it says...
I love how it says:
Now 54 feels like 54
High 52 feels like 49
Low 45 feels like 54
Um, wouldn't the high be 54? And how does the god know it's going to feel like 54 when it's 45? That looks suspiciously like the current temp.
Feels Like
Thanks for the feedback Jeff on the feels like.
I'm going to revisit it again, we changed the way it's calculated based on more feedback from IBM and I think a gremlin has crept back in. Apologies.
Our challenge is we don't just get a feels like temperature from IBM, but we actually get the wind chill factor and / or a heat index. The trick is working out when to apply those factors to the day high, low and current temperature ... and it seems the data is not always amenable to the algorithm.
Regards
Scott
High, low and feels like
My comment wasn't meant as a criticism, just an observation, although with values for "feels like" such as I reported seeing, it doesn't lend much confidence in those values. What actually baffles me more and always makes me chuckle is when the current temp is outside the stated high and low range. If the current temp is 54 degrees and the high is given as 52, that's quite obviously wrong. I will say, though, that your app is by no means the only one to make this mistake. I've seen this happen many times with several weather reporting services.
I get the same chuckle when I see a report that there's 80% chance of rain when it also reports that it's raining. Ok, if it's raining, there's a 100% chance of rain, wouldn't you say? Unless that 80% means that it's going to rain 80% of the day.
Is there a place where I need to configure notifications or do I just get them when one is issued by the weather service? My app says no notifications, so I don't know what notifications I might expect to see.
High, low and feels like
The reason for the discrepancy with the day high and low vs current is due to when the models run. The day high and low are computed twice a day, whereas the current temperature is recomputed every 15 minutes, although we only collect it hourly.
So, it's quite possible for the day high calculated at 7am to be lower than a current temperature computed in the last 15 minutes.
Notifications have to be switched on and configured. You can do this by double tapping the flag icon.
A perfectly valid reason for the discrepancy
Oftentimes, when it is very hot and/or humid outside, even though the temperature might be, for example, 85º outside, the humidity may make it feel like 90º or higher. That is perfectly ordinary to get information like that from weather apps.
Feels like
Hi Everyone,
My apologies, but definitely a bug for the daily feels like :(
We are quite close on our 1.3 update so I will defer a fix to that release. The hourly feels like in the timeline, weather wheel and current temperature is unaffected.
Thanks Jeff for bringing to my attention.
Regards
Scott
You're welcome
Thank you, Scott, for being so accommodating. I understand about the high and low calculations. As I said, yours is not the only app that exhibits this behavior -- and probably for the same reason. Again, I just think it's funny.
I took another look and realized that the "no notifications" was a button, so I got my notifications configured. We're currently not experiencing any unusual weather here now, so I've not received any notifications, but I get the summary later today. Thanks so much for this great app.
Weather gods expressions
I just love the language used by the app when describing conditions, e.g. But for a few passing clouds, generally fare, or something like: a stray shower with perhaps a rumble of thunder. I have not heard any other forecast putting into words so eloquently what may happen. This and all the other features makes this one of my most favourite apps to use
Notifications come multiple times
Hello all,
After updating to 1.2 I have encountered a problem with the Push notifications. That is that each notification will come through multiple times at the same time. I think that none of the push notifications has come only once, as one would expect, but two, three or four times.
This is a little annoying. Have others seen this behaviour? It is easy to notice. I have Weather Gods notifications on the lock screen, and when a notification comes in, I can hear the chime going off, but VoiceOver will announce, for example, "Three new notifications", and after that I indeed have three notifications from Weather Gods with exactly the same content in all of them.
Edit: This morning at 7.30 AM I had four notifications with two different texts, but basically the same content. I haven't been looking very deeply into the earlier ones, so it's entirely possible that also they have had sligthly different texts in the notifications. But there's definitely something going on here.
Notifications come multiple times
Hi,
We are currently looking into this with IBM as there appears to be a problem affecting some users.
The reason for the notifications with different texts, similar content is because of the schedule and as it happens settings.
It's quite possible to receive a rain notification for today as the same time as the live rain notification is sent out.
The important part to check is the title e.g. "My place today" and "My place live" will be different notifications.
To recap, there are some notifications being duplicated (being investigated) ... but not all of them will be duplicates, they just have similar content.
Can anyone else affected please send me a feedback email and the date/time of just one of the duplicates and what the title was. It will help us get to the bottom of this.
Apologies for the annoyance.
Regards
Scott
Duplicates
I am getting duplicates of my daily 7am and 7pm notifications. The daily summary comes twice, the sunrise and set comes twice, and any weather specific alerts, such as "Rain expected from 6pm..." are all duplicated. I have not seen any more than two of each.
Duplicates
Hi,
Thanks for the info.
Can you send me a feedback email please ? It contains an id which is unique to you and allows me to find your device registered on the push system. The id is anonymous.
Regards
Scott
Update
Hi All,
Just an update to say we are still investigating ... but not found any cause so far.
Can people please also let me know if they are NOT getting duplicates?
It would be good to try and get a size of the problem. For info, I've not received any duplicates myself ... so it's a bit challenging to debug.
Thanks
Scott
no duplicates here
The subject says it all. My notifications are working as expected.
no duplicates here
Thanks Mendi - appreciate the feedback.
We have had a bit of a breakthrough tonight and can repeatedly send one message (not from Weather Gods) to a device and the recipient gets two.
It therefore looks like the problem is outside of Weather Gods and somewhere in the IBM cloud.
Chasing IBM ...
notification
I sometimes get 3 notifications at the same times. This has happen from the beginning of WG.
notifications come multiple times
Thanks for the info Holger. Not sure why it's only sometimes the duplicates or more come through.
Once we've got a fix, we can run some tests if you like with your device to see if it's part of the same problem or something different.
Feedback sent.
Feedback sent.
Update
Hi All,
Just an update - the problem has been identified by IBM and a fix is being prepared.
The cause of the problem is that some devices registered twice for push notifications with the IBM service - hence you received two lots of notifications.
It's a tricky one to fix as we have to go careful, identify all affected users, and then unregister just one of the accounts.
I've not heard of any timescale just yet, but it is a high priority, so please bear with us.
Once again, apologies for the annoyance and inconvenience.
Regards
Scott
Update
Hi All,
Quick update ...
IBM are planning on rolling out a patch tomorrow (19th May) which will hopefully fix:
1. Duplicate notifications
2. Receiving notifications for places you don't have as favourites
Once it's live I will update again.
Thanks for your patience.
Scott
awaiting the update
Scott: You thank us for our patience, but I thank you for your work and communication with us. I was looking for the way to send you data dealing with the duplicate notifications. I get 2 of each notification sent. I have them set to 8 AM. and 7 PM. I am aware that 2 or maybe 3 notifications, each with slightly more or less information are sent. I receive 2 of each. I do not receive notifications of any other than my home city, so that isn't a problem. After reading your message about a fix being sent from IBM on or around the nineteenth, I'm sour that we will get it soon after that. I remain a patient and satisfied app user. Keep up the GREAT customer service of improving the app and communicating progress to us through Applevis.
Latest update
Hi All,
The latest is mixed ...
1. The bug with receiving notifications for places you don't have saved has been fixed.
2. The duplicates has been looked at in great detail and we've tried different scenarios to fix the problem.
It's looking like the only way to fix this is to delete the push notification registration for each affected user, on the IBM system and then re-register through Weather Gods.
What does this mean?
1. I would delete the registration record which will stop ALL push notifications for your device from Weather Gods - other apps are not affected
2. You would launch Weather Gods and then we re-register your device, preserving all your settings. This happens automatically on launch - we built a failsafe in a long time ago, in case something like this happened. Although, we never thought we would be using it :(
My challenge is how to communicate this to the 240 affected users.
My approach will probably be:
1. Send a notification to each affected device informing about what will happen and a time when they will need to relaunch Weather Gods (after I have removed the registration record). After this notifications should start arriving, although it might take up to 2-3 hours.
There is nothing to do just yet ... but I will most likely set the ball rolling sometime today (Saturday 20th May)
Once again, thank you for your patience.
Regards
Scott
when it's ready, let us know
Once you got everything done on your end, let us know what we need to do to exterminate this bug. Give us the directions on how to use this roach powder, so to speak. Thanks in advance.
when it's ready, let us know
We're just going to try something a little different ... which if it works should mean no change for anyone. Just situation normal ... but without the duplicates :)
Fingers crossed!
It's done!
Hi All,
We should be done (I hope).
Please let me know if you are still receiving duplicates after 30 minutes or so (19:05 GMT) and it would be great to hear from people who did have duplicates and now don't!
It's important that everyone is on the latest updates as well, 1.2.
Thanks everyone for your patience.
Hopefully less stormy going forward :)
Scott
No More Duplicates
As one of the users experiencing the duplicate notifications, I really appreciate you taking the time to communicate how this was being fixed. I am very happy to say that I am no longer receiving these duplicates.
No More Duplicates
Thanks MelodicFate - it's good to know that they've stopped duplicating.