iPhone ‘App’ Of The Week : WorldView
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04/12/2008 – – iPhone ‘App’ Of The Week : World View
Some iPhone ‘Apps’ are immediate hits, getting daily use from the moment I download them, other iPhone ‘Apps’ take some figuring out.
This week’s iPhone ‘App’ Of The Week was one of the latter. I downloaded WorldView without a clear idea of what I would do with this ‘App.’  The idea of being able to view more than 6,000 web cams from all over the world was interesting, but was it just a novelty?
After playing with WorldView I found it to be a useful tool as a location photograher when trying to come up with concepts for photo shoots in unfamiliar locations.  While the webcams tied into WorldView might have a limited view, they provided me with some valuable information I could not gather in any other way.  Most cameras are updated about every 15 minutes, and watching these webcam images allows me to see the ‘quality of light’ at certain times of the day , in the days leading up to a shoot.
I have learned what cities have a haze at certain times of the day (or all day long) and I have been able to find out accurate weather, visually. WorldView has allowed me to determine if the sky is grey or if the sky opened up with nice warm light following a heavy rain storm. This information is not available on weather sites, but WorldView has allowed me rapid access to this information to make quick decisions on where I plan on setting up a photo shoot.
While WorldView will probably never be a daily use ‘App’ for me, and it is intended to be a novelty ‘App’ for traveling, it has proven to be an extremely useful tool for remote planning and logistics. Being able to get a semi-real-time view of the sky has afforded me some great insight for rapidly setting up a location photo shoots and creating images I would have missed due to relying on incomplete information.
With a price tag of ‘free’ download WorldView and see if it works for you.
Below are four screen shots of WorldView
Happy Flying!
–Click Images Below To Enlarge–
