Weather Gods Data Service Problem

By Weather Gods (Scott), 6 March, 2018

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Hi All,

I hope this is ok to post here.

I just wanted to say that we are having some severe problems with our data service provider, IBM. We switched account types today and clearly something has gone badly wrong - we have been planning this since December and IBM assured us that there would be no impact to service!!

Unfortunately, it seems to be one of those problems where everything is flagged green but the service just isn't working as expected. We have a severity 1 issue raised with them and it is being escalated through other channels now.

I will be off to bed soon and it's possible it may still be unavailable tomorrow - I really hope not.

The impact will be on the app and the notifications.

I can only apologise and thank you for your patience.

Scott

Options

Comments

By blindgary1 on Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - 12:22

Thanks for the update Scott i was wondering why i got weather data not responding 5403 double tap with two fingers to try again a great app the weather notifications in the uk have been spot on this winter weather gods has become my weather

By Weather Gods (Scott) on Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - 12:22

Hi All,

Sorry to say that we are still down as IBM have accidentally reset our data keys, rendering the App dead & forcing us to suspend sales. Pushing for a speedy resumption of service.

Worst case scenario is we have to issue an app update for the App Store which will take 3-4 days.

Hoping that IBM can sort themselves out.

More news soon
Scott

By Dawn 👩🏻‍🦯 on Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - 12:22

Hi Scott! Thanks for the info! What could possibly go wrong? lol
Hope it gets fixed soon!

By Weather Gods (Scott) on Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - 12:22

Thanks Malcolm, we are indeed back ... phew!

It might take a few hours for the notification system to get back up to speed - lots of complex moving parts.

Thanks everybody for your patience and understanding in this matter.

Scott

By Malcolm13 on Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - 12:22

Glad to have you back with us. Can you make the snow here in Tredegar disappear too?

Thanks.

By Weather Gods (Scott) on Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - 12:22

LOL Malcolm, version 3 :)

By Kelly Pierce on Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - 12:22

I still received the error message saying the data service was not responding. I forced quit the app and then launched it again with the data appearing as usual.

By Hadi on Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - 12:22

* secretively hopes that they give up on IBM and change servers so i can access the app from Iran *
:)

By Weather Gods (Scott) on Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - 12:22

Sorry Hadi, can't see it happening anytime soon :) I am now considering a backup datasource though. We have backup servers with IBM (US and UK) and all were deactivated, so that didn't help us.

We have Dark Sky as a partial datasource in the app, but now I am thinking of having a way to switchover to a full Dark Sky datasource should this ever happen again.

By Kelly Pierce on Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - 12:22

People can use VPNs to get around country specific blockages imposed by governments. The government of Iran supports and funds terrorists and terrorism and the international community has applied sanctions, which include access to cloud computing services, as punishment. I can’t say anything more about VPN’s because it is a violation of United States law to help people avoid the imposition of applied sanctions.

By snowyowl on Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - 12:22

Hi Scott. Would it be posible to switch to Dark sky for our weather Data with the weather gods app. I have to be honest I find Dark sky more reliable than I do IBM. To be honest a lot of weather apps use the dark sky. I have used it myself just for notifications but I find it incredibly accurate.

Cheers Scott.

By Weather Gods (Scott) on Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - 12:22

Hi Snowy,

I think if we had the capability to switch then it could be an option. However, Dark Sky doesn't offer the daily text summaries which we get from IBM and I know a lot of users do like those. Also, the hourly summaries are much less descriptive.

Strangely, Carrot weather use Dark Sky and then charge for IBM data (Weather Underground) as a premium option.

Further down the line we do want to use more data from IBM, stuff like pollen, health alerts for people who might suffer from arthritis, asthma. IBM can also give us air quality data.

So, the strategy is to stay with IBM, but if there was a switchable backup source as Dark Sky then I cant see any reason why you couldn't switch the app over, with the caveat that some of the data / notifications may be missing.

Scott

By Dawn 👩🏻‍🦯 on Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - 12:22

Welcome back Scott! Glad you've come back to us! Thank you for keeping us posted regarding this snafu.

By Weather Gods (Scott) on Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - 12:22

Thanks Dawn :)

By Hadi on Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - 12:22

@kelly there is currently no sanctions applied by the "International community" on Iran regarding anything. The nuclear sanctions which were imposed were all canceled do to the agreement known as Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. IBM is just lazy to fix their blacklist.
Anyway I know how to use a VPN to go through such silly blacklists. It's just effort.

I’m glad you are familiar with VPN’s so you can bypass the governmental silliness. As you said, it is not governmental silliness anymore but corporate silliness. It is looking more and more that large corporations rather than governments are preventing the free flow of ideas and information these days.