Foreca

Finnish company Foreca to provide global weather service for Microsoft online services

Helsinki, Finland - A Finnish weather service company Foreca is providing weather services to Microsoft online sites around the world. One site includes the refreshed MSN Weather channel in the US launched on Thursday, June 29th.

Foreca provides Microsoft Corp. with approximately 40 million weather forecasts every day. This information includes 5,500 custom designed map products, which will amount to more than 100,000 map images daily. Foreca data covering 55,000 locations globally, including 30,000 in US and 3,000 locations in France, United Kingdom, Germany, and 2,500 locations in Japan, will provide Microsoft one of the most comprehensive online weather services around the world.

Foreca provides weather data for weather needs across MSN, Windows and Microsoft properties. This includes weather channels and modules in over 40 MSN regional markets, gadgets for 53 Live.com regional markets, inclusion in MSN Direct and SPOT services, and Instant Answers through MSN Search.

"We're pleased to forge this global relationship with Foreca, a pioneer in weather technology services," said John Nicol, general manager of the MSN network. "Integrating worldwide weather information helps further our goal of providing people with a rich, interactive media experience."

Foreca's relationship with MSN began in autumn of 2001, when the first Flash technology based weather service was launched on the MSN Sweden site, www.msn.se. Later Foreca became the weather content provider for MSN international sites. With this new agreement Foreca is Microsoft's leading global weather data and service provider.

"It is great to be able to build up one of the best on-line weather services with MSN. This worldwide service shows that weather services can be informative and still entertaining", said Tiina Asula, sales director of Foreca. "This deal strengthens our relationship with MSN and shows Foreca's commitment to providing the most advanced weather services on-line."

Examples of the new MSN weather services: www.msn.com, weather.msn.com, www.live.com, and search.msn.com.

About Foreca

Foreca is a private weather service company based in Helsinki, Finland. Foreca provides weather services for Internet, mobile, industries and media.

For more information:
Tiina Asula, Sales Director, Foreca Ltd
e-mail: tiina.asula@foreca.com
mobile +358 40 558 1368

The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.