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SUNY Fredonia student Nicholas Gunner has launched Atmotag, a social networking Web site that offers people the ability to contribute to user-generated weather maps. Gunner began to work on the site in August 2009, with the official site launch in spring 2010.
“Atmotag is terrific example of individual inventiveness and the application of social media to collaborate on science problems — an individual starts with an idea, builds it, and invites others to participate,” explained SUNY Fredonia Webmaster Jonathan Woolson.
The Web site invites users to create content in the form of “weather tags.” These tags can include descriptions of weather events, pictures, video, geographical location, and weather readings such as temperature, wind speed, cloud cover, and precipitation. When compiled, this data can be used to interpret and analyze general weather conditions.
“Everybody is sick of hearing things like 'scattered showers possible,'” explained Gunner. “I want to know where the weather is now and I want to hear what everybody has to say about it. Atmotag is a place where that can happen.”
Gunner will be presenting his project at the 12th Annual Student Research and Creative Activity Exposition on Tuesday, April 27, at 1 p.m. in room S104 of the Williams Center. All campus and community members are encouraged to attend the presentation to learn more about the Web site's capabilities.
A junior Communication major, Gunner has been developing Atmotag.com for internship credit under both Woolson and Dr. Sherri Mason, head of the Environmental Sciences program at SUNY Fredonia.
“Sites like Facebook and YouTube have proven the potential of Web sites with overlapping categories of public interest,” said Mason. “What is truly unique about Atmotag is that it represents the intersection of two worlds in its ability to harness people's innate interest in talking about weather via social media, while gathering real, useful data.
Users of Atmotag can directly connect their Facebook and Twitter accounts to the site in order to easily share content. Future plans for Atmotag include wiki-style forecasting, advanced-user relationships, and smart-phone integration.
