Foreca

Edinburgh and Helsinki - 8th June, 2009 - Foreca Ltd, leader in digital weather services for mobile and LBS applications and Rapid Mobile Media Ltd, provider of innovative mobile marketing solutions, have teamed up to launch Foreca's mobile weather service through an interactive application available on a wide range of handsets. The detailed weather information available for global locations can now be delivered in real time to users' mobile phones thanks to Rapid Mobile's technology platforms.

Foreca expands its mobile weather application offering to cover almost all the mobile phones in the market today. "With an ever increasing appetite from a mobile audience for accurate, up-to-date weather information it was important for us at Foreca to be able to rapidly address the broadest possible audience of mobile phone users with our application", said Marko Moilanen, VP Business Development, Foreca.

Rapid Mobile's ThinkPhone delivery platforms and Ad360 mobile advertising server will maximise reach for Foreca's service and provide additional branding and monetisation opportunities, whilst delivering the best possible user experience.

"Rapid Mobile's automatic provisioning platform capabilities mean that we are able to achieve this market reach through the development of only one version of the application, minimising engineering costs and time to market whilst meeting our stringent requirements for quality." Marko Moilanen, VP Business Development, Foreca continues.

"Weather information is a proven revenue generator and is of great value to mobile users, workers and travellers. Foreca's detailed meterological information provides current conditions, satellite images, radar images, and weather forecasts as and when the user requires them and for any selection of location," Jeremy Copp, Rapid Mobile Media CEO commented." As well as ensuring that Foreca can offer users the best possible mobile experience, regardless of their mobile phone type, our platforms can also automatically deliver multi-lingual versions of the application to reach a truly global audience. We look forward to assisting Foreca in delivering the pre-eminent mobile weather forecasting service."

The Foreca mobile weather applications can be accessed by visiting http://getfw.com from a mobile phone or on the web.

 

About Foreca Ltd.

Foreca Ltd. is a full-scale weather company based in Helsinki, Finland. Foreca has more than ten years of experience of forecasting weather and providing internet and mobile weather services. Foreca specializes in weather services for digital media and especially mobile devices. Foreca's first commercial mobile weather service was launched already in 1997, and it is still steady revenue creator. Thanks to its world-wide partner network Foreca is able to provide accurate weather information for any market. Today, Foreca's mobile weather services have users across all continents. For more information please visit http://corporate.foreca.com

About Rapid Mobile Media Ltd

Rapid Mobile Media is an Edinburgh-based software company licensing platforms that enable automatic optimisation, delivery and installation of services, applications and content on any mobile phone, without the need for user intervention or device-side agents. The company's ThinkPhone Deliver platform and ThinkPhone Design environment allow the rapid deployment of any type of service to the mobile environment, and have to date automatically provisioned more than 4,000 phone types. The ThinkPhone Direct platform provides automatic delivery and optimisation of mobile internet sites. The Ad360 platform provides complete management of mobile advertising campaigns, allowing graphical and textual adverts to automatically be delivered to the selected WAP, SMS, MMS or application channels at the highest possible quality. For more information please visit http://www.rapid-mobile.com

 

 

 

Barcelona - February 16, 2009 - NAVTEQ, a leading global provider of digital maps for vehicle navigation and location-based solutions, announced its collaboration with Foreca Ltd., a weather service company specializing in services for digital media and mobile, to provide the LBS developer community with access to ForecaWeatherAPI and NaviFeed, both of which enable the implementation of weather information based on location into mobile applications and web services. Access to the Weather API and NaviFeed "getting started" package is free of charge through the NAVTEQ Network for DevelopersTM site (www.NN4D.com).

 

ForecaWeatherAPI provides weather forecasts, current conditions and optional mobile weather animations for any location in the world. This free "getting started" package allows LBS developers to get access to latitude/longitude-coordinate based current weather conditions and a three-day overview forecast with weather codes and symbols and daily forecasted high and low temperatures, and use these in applications or web services. Additional weather features and animations are available under separate commercial agreement with Foreca.

 

NaviFeed provides accurate weather information based on the user's position and the forecast is created in real-time based on the coordinates. The interface is suitable for integrating weather information into mobile applications, web applications or any other application which can receive and visualize online data. The service is available for any location worldwide, including open oceans. Due to the coordinate-based approach, NaviFeed is well-suited for any LBS application. As a part of ForecaWeatherAPI, developers with a commercial agreement with Foreca can also get access to weather data via NameFeed, which provides weather information for more than 140,000 pre-defined locations globally which are identified by location names and IDs instead of latitude/longitude coordinates.

 

The collaboration between NAVTEQ and Foreca had its roots in Foreca's successful participation in the 2008 edititon of the NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge, the leading developer competition in the LBS space. At the Global LBS Challenge, Foreca gained recognition for its outstanding weather services and applicability to LBS applications.

 

"The NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge was an excellent way for Foreca to showcase its capabilities to the leading global LBS players," commented Marko Moilanen, VP Business Development at Foreca. "We are very excited to now be working with NAVTEQ to provide its developer community with the opportunity to integrate weather information with NAVTEQ maps into new innovative LBS applications with the use of the ForecaWeatherAPI."

 

"NAVTEQ Network for Developers is the premier program for connecting LBS application developers and partners, offering the technical and business support needed to build, showcase and launch the industry's most innovative LBS solutions," said Marc Naddell, vice president, partner and developer programs, NAVTEQ. "With the help of the Foreca Weather API, any connected navigation device can bring users up-to-date weather forecasts for a particular destination, on-route and wherever you want to go. This provides an excellent added functionality to NAVTEQ map data and already existing mapping APIs."

 

Naddell continues, "We have been able to implement Foreca weather forecasts as an interactive service and dynamic content feature on our NN4D website, using an available geocoding API. This is a great example of how easy it is to use API's supporting NAVTEQ map products to create LBS features, in this case to enhance a community service."

 

For technical documentation describing the ForecaWeatherAPI in more detail, available weather data as well as licensing conditions, and to see a demo implementation of weather data feeds on NN4D, go to www.nn4d.com/foreca.

 

The ForecaWeatherAPI will be demonstrated on the NN4D pod in NAVTEQ's booth at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain this week. You will find NAVTEQ in stand number 1G45 located in exhibition Hall 1 at Fira Montjuïc.

 

About Foreca

Foreca Ltd. is a full-scale weather company based in Helsinki, Finland. Foreca has more than 10 years of experience of forecasting weather and providing internet and mobile weather services. Foreca specializes in weather services for digital media and mobile, and thanks to its world-wide partner network they are able to provide accurate weather information for any market. Their first commercial mobile weather service was launched already in 1997, and it is still up an running. Today, Foreca's mobile weather services have users across all continents.

 

About the NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge

First launched in 2003, the NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge is focused on driving the development and visibility of innovative navigation solutions for wireless devices. From wireless business applications to sports, travel and security, integrating the accuracy and richness of NAVTEQ digital map data facilitates the timely evolution of the next wave of LBS. Complete development resources, information and technical support for creating LBS and Navigation solutions using NAVTEQ products and services is available at www.LBSChallenge.com.

 

About NAVTEQ Network for Developers

NAVTEQ Network for Developers (NN4D) is a dynamic online web portal that provides developers and business partners with the technical and business support needed to build, showcase and launch the most innovative location-enabled solutions. Connect with the people, tools and resources you need to grow your business by visiting www.NN4D.com.

 

About NAVTEQ

NAVTEQ is a leading provider of comprehensive digital map information for automotive navigation systems, mobile navigation devices, Internet-based mapping applications, and government and business solutions. NAVTEQ creates the digital maps and map content that power navigation and location-based services solutions around the world. The Chicago-based company was founded in 1985 and has approximately 4,000 employees located in 196 offices and in 43 countries.

 

NAVTEQ, Global LBS Challenge and NAVTEQ Network for Developers are trademarks in the U.S. and other countries. All rights reserved.

 

Helsinki, Finland –  A Finnish weather service company -  Foreca has signed a content license agreement with Google Ireland Limited. Foreca will provide Russian weather information to Google on-line sites. Weather information includes current conditions, forecasts and satellite images over Russia.

 “In last couple of years, Foreca has gained a strong foothold in the international weather business”, said Tiina Asula sales director at Foreca. “Cooperating with Google, Foreca can get its weather information to one of the most popular online services in the world. This strengthens our position even more. We are very excited to start our cooperation with Google.”

Foreca weather information will appear on Google services during this spring,

Helsinki, Finland – Cumulus, stratus and cirrus clouds are well known among all the weather freaks. The Latin names for the clouds have already been used more than two hundred years. Foreca – a Finnish weather service company has taken weather services back to its roots. Foreca’s mobile weather service foreca.mobi is now available also in Latin.

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Foreca, a Finnish weather service company, has launched a new free mobile internet weather service, foreca.mobi. Foreca.mobi is the most comprehensive mobile weather service in the world.
In foreca.mobi, there is weather information for more than 80.000 locations around the world.

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Foreca, Finnish weather service company, launches a web weather service in English. The service has weather forecasts for all the countries in the world and it also has more detailed forecasts for thousands of major cities around the world. Every user can personalize the weather site by adding his most favourite locations as default.

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