To give a bit of background story, this is a personal project, that has emerged from my personal frustration with umbrellas.<p>I basically really dislike bringing an umbrella with me, as it brings so much complexities. Take for example the case that you buy a too big and expensive umbrella (e.g. for golfers), it is actually a hassle to drag along - just by its weight and size. It is also something you will most likely lose during a company event, after one or two drinks .
If you buy a small and cheap version, you won’t get sufficient protection due to the small surface. In addition, they tend to break quickly, and when this happens, you might as well not have had one with you in the first place.<p>The bottom line is that I believe that everyone wants to minimise their interaction with umbrellas. And in order to do so, you need to know if it's going to rain or not. That is exactly what this web app tries to solve, by basically sending you automated alerts just before you leave your doorsteps.<p>Btw, its not just for a rainy audience, it can be also used in sunny regions. If you are one of those lucky ones that live in a sunny region, you probably do not look at the weather forecast on a regular basis. As a pre-emptive measure, you can set up an alert to not get caught by surprise when it actually does rain.<p>Happy to have your feedback on the idea and execution!
The privacy policy concerns me a bit. It's clearly copy/pasted from somewhere else (still has `[name]` and `[website]` placeholders) which means the author really hasn't given much thought into privacy, or perhaps they're not being entirely truthful.<p>Is the data being sold? What security measures have you taken? You're tying email addresses to physical locations, this is a goldmine of information for all sorts of actors.
The decision to take an umbrella shouldn't be about the probability of rain, but about the cost of being rained upon vs the cost of taking an umbrella.<p>It doesn't matter if there's only a 1% chance of rain if you're parading your sugar sculpture around town all day. Similarly a 90% chance of rain when you're driving to and from a friend's house can be largely ignored.
The UX confused me a little.<p>I was first expecting the ability to see if I needed an umbrella _now_ compared to in the future.<p>Then I got stuck for a little while trying to change the location from SF, I couldn't tell where I needed to click or that I did end up focusing something. The top line to the form sort of looked like it was trying to be a material design field, and the card with SF in it looked like it was supposed to be editable - it is editable, I just happened to only be clicking on the pin (and didn't notice the slight state change when I found the input).<p>If you auto-detect a timezone, it's probably better to guess that as a default location vs SF?
Imho, this only make sense as an unobtrusive indicator next to the front door where the umbrella's are (and then I do see it making sense, with some extra info like temp). I feel like taking out my phone or forcing me to look at it even just one extra time is not something I want to do to myself.<p>It's like my smarthome, I either automate or make a (smart) button. Taking out the phone is a no no, but there is certainly a place for stuff like this.<p>I really wish my Nest V3 was more hackable, it's in such a central location and I look at that thing so often... and it tells me so little.<p>Oh and as a Dutch person we already look at buienradar [0] a lot and buienalarm [1] is also pretty popular here, both do notifications (maybe not at custom times, more like in 10 min or so I think, to be honest I think the apps are wrong too often to really trust them).<p>[0] <a href="https://www.buienradar.nl/" rel="nofollow">https://www.buienradar.nl/</a><p>[1] <a href="https://www.buienalarm.nl/" rel="nofollow">https://www.buienalarm.nl/</a>
Thank you everyone for the much appreciated feedback. Based on the initial discussion, I just released a new version that takes into account one of the major requests, which is to have on the front page a preview of the alert.<p>You can read more about it in the changelog here: <a href="https://umbrellatoday.app/#!/changelog" rel="nofollow">https://umbrellatoday.app/#!/changelog</a><p>Try out the new feature by refreshing the homepage (perhaps also your cache): <a href="https://umbrellatoday.app" rel="nofollow">https://umbrellatoday.app</a>.<p>The first day was amazing in terms of engagement, I posted a tweet about that: <a href="https://twitter.com/quantavenue/status/1485951753904435201" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/quantavenue/status/1485951753904435201</a><p>We are talking about hundreds of subscribers, and thousands of visitors.<p>More to follow.
I'm always a little confused by the reduction of weather data into something so binary. As AndrewOMartin said, even "taking an umbrella" is contextual, and should probably be at least some form of time-graph so that you can at least check for however long you plan to be outside for.<p>That said: combining data for heuristics is a nice way to simply an onslaught of data. For example, the above graph might be nicely expressed by something similar to but not exactly like "expected rainfall" (which accounts for chance of rain but also intensity). For temperature, "feels like", combining the various factors that actually affect skin temperature - wind and moisture included [0] - is probably best.<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_chill#Australian_apparent_temperature" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_chill#Australian_apparent...</a>
This reminds me of something I sae years ago from "ambient technology"<p>An umbrella whose handle lit up if there was rain in the forecast.<p><a href="https://www.wired.com/2007/07/ambient-umbrell/amp" rel="nofollow">https://www.wired.com/2007/07/ambient-umbrell/amp</a>
I recieved a very fine umbrella as a gift once (James Smith & Sons. solid stick) and the joke around the house became "pop or fop?" As in what was the percent chance of precipitation (p.o.p) that excused carrying the umbrella that day whereby I would not just be a fop carrying the umbrella as an accessory?<p>It was so fine, I'd want to carry it for anything over 50%, but I knew it was being a bit dandyish, so a decade and some later, nowadays I don't bring it with me unless it's actually raining.<p>Perhaps a future feature of this app would be not so much whether to carry an umbrella on a given day, but whether it is appropriate to carry a <i>certain</i> umbrella. I'm sure the owners of JS&S would have some insight!
I was curious where the weather data comes from (since it seems to be a pain to gather it reliably, globally, and preferably for free), the "learn more" page didn't mention that, but mentioned the following:<p>> Hassle free, our AI will remind you of bringing an umbrella on a rainy day<p>Which made me to wonder whether it just guesses that based on the date and city name; might be nice to expand on both "AI" usage and weather sources.<p>Wasn't able to check that it works without entering email and setting a notification either (as some of the other comments mentioned already, it's what one may expect). Also as others mentioned, 3 forms seem unnecessary. And JS seems unnecessary as well.
The location verification is a bit wonky for me.<p>I entered 'Sudbury, MA' --> NOK, 'Sudbury' validates to 'Greater Sudbury (CA)', 'Sudbury (MA)' --> NOK. Tried with a neighboring city in Massachusetts, 'Concord' --> Validates as fine but given the experience with Sudbury, it isn't obvious which of the ~35 Concords that there are in the US (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concord" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concord</a>).<p>I'm guessing this is scoped to just California?
When will they just fly an umbrella drone to me that follows directly overhead to keep me dry?<p>I like my umbrella and I always have it with me in the special umbrella pocket of my bag.
Very cool, and an idea for someday:<p>1. Keep improving this!<p>2. Add a more general alert, for paid subscribers. I'd easily pay $5 or $10/month for something to just <i>tell me what I need that day</i> (and maybe when generally I'll need it)<p>All the weather apps (that I know of, I haven't researched this) show me the weather and then want ME to figure it out. I don't want to figure it out. If I can trust you, I'd rather lean on you.
Great idea, and I really like the design of the site. One thing that could be improved is the navigation between policies. The 'down arrow' confused me since I expected the policy would open directly below the headline, and the page navigate to "Available policies" instead of the start of the actual policy.
There was an earlier version of this back in the early 2000s, and I was a subscriber then: <a href="https://thoughtbot.com/blog/umbrella-today" rel="nofollow">https://thoughtbot.com/blog/umbrella-today</a>
Cool idea I actually added this as a feature to my Weather Extension. I like the idea of being alerted as well.
<a href="https://weatherextension.com/" rel="nofollow">https://weatherextension.com/</a>
Umbrella is also used when weather is very hot, aka super sunny days. This app should factor that in as well rather than just exclusively for rainy days.
This reminds me of Do I Need A Jacket. Same premise, I suppose.<p><a href="https://doineedajacket.com/" rel="nofollow">https://doineedajacket.com/</a>