Avbrief

[angelacr]

Theirs not working? Why not use YAWS? Yet Another Weather Service is at http://yaws.mobi or http://activitae.com/pda. It's cost and advert free - always has been and always probably will.
_______________________________________
Angela
If it's not on YAWS it won't be on anyone else's.

[Bravo73]

Thanks, lurker06.

[IO540]

I think Avbrief have modified their user authentication.

I've been using their little PDA URL for a couple of years. This never asked for a login, but now it does.

However, while it asks for it every time on my desktop PC, it doesn't ask for it on my HP4700 PDA.

I am a paying subscriber, so on the desktop PC the login/password are already preconfigured and I just press OK. I am pretty sure I had previously entered the login/pwd into the PDA too, at some stage.

Interesting to note that the same login/pwd pair that gets you into the main site also works on the PDA login.

This suggests that they are now using cookies, or using them in a different way, but TBH I don't know enough about this stuff.

On my desktop, I enable 1st party cookies, block 3rd party cookies, and enable session cookies. On the PDA, the behaviour is whatever the default is; there is just one box called "allow cookies" and that is checked.

[bookworm]

I'm sorry to come to this thread so late. I was hoping to wait until problems have been sorted but sadly that might take another couple of days.

I think Avbrief have modified their user authentication.

We have. In fact we've migrated everything to a completely different set of hardware in a completely different place, and a change to authentication was necessary as part of that move. The consequence was the suspension of guest (non-paying user) access, registration and subscriptions during the transition, and it's taken longer than we had hoped to restore these. Sorry. This was not well communicated in the alert message.

Subscribers should have not noticed a difference, other than a slightly faster site now.

This suggests that they are now using cookies, or using them in a different way.

We don't use cookies. I suspect your PDA may simply be caching the userid/password while your desktop browser asks explicitly each time.

Thanks for your patience

The (AvBrief) worm

[Bravo73]

Many, many thanks for the gen, bookworm.

[Bravo73]

Yay. Freebie AvBrief is back up.


New registrations/subscriptions are still not possible but when they are...

[IO540]

Unfortunately, the authentication which Avbrief now apply to their PDA opmet page has increased the data volume from about 2k to 15-25k

This is significant when on GBP 10/MB GPRS and an unreliable/marginal connection to boot. Sadly, it is time for me to look elsewhere for this facility. Does anybody know of a URL where I can type a string of airports e.g.

EGKK EGLL EGMC LGKR LGIR

and get the METARs and TAFs for all of them?

I know there are several sites around but they seem to fail for many European airports.

SMS is no good as text messages are often delayed by days when abroad.

[drauk]

IO540:

http://activitae.com/multi.htm

Low bandwidth, takes multiple idents all at once, formatted for a PDA/smart-phone screen. I don't know how reliable it is for obscure airports across Europe, but it certainly gives decent data for the example you quoted.

[angelacr]

I don't know how reliable it is for obscure airports across Europe, but it certainly gives decent data for the example you quoted.

All YAWS weather data comes from the US National Weather Service - and in my experience of running YAWS at activitae, for more than 4 years, NWS is second to none. YAWS is currently running with a 99.8% uptime.

YAWS Multi presently fetches data from server run by Aviation Digital Data Services using NWS data and accesses mainstream airport data i.e. all that data propagated across world aviation networks. If you want something a little more esoteric, especially French airfileds, such as Abbeville (LFOI) for example - which do not propagate widely, you may need to use the single lookup of YAWS original. That is coded to seek data from European sources too.

A short URL for your phone is http://yaws.mobi That will take you to the front page of YAWS Original, from where YAWS Multi, YAWS UK etc. may be selected.

Since the very complimentary article by David Broom in the PFA magazine, around Christmas, use of YAWS has risen markedly.

EICK remains the highest searched for airport - not sure why? Something to do with RyanAir perhaps?

I started YAWS for my own use as I couldn't find the kind of data I wanted from existing commercial sources and in the low bandwidth form I wanted. Sadly, I think that still holds true today.

If your phone has only a rudimentary browser but can run small Java programs I highly recommend the use of Opera Mini. It is free software.

You are welcome to use YAWS for free.
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Angela