After a few days using Apple’s new operating system, I’ve found myself becoming surprisingly addicted to Dashboard widgets, in particular the Address book and iTunes controller.
I’d also been keen to use the Weather widget but entering the name of my home town of Melbourne (Australia) gave me the weather for Melbourne, Florida instead. Not quite what I was looking for! It turns out this US-centric focus is easy to fix by using AccuWeather’s syntax for international locations. In the case of Melbourne, Australia, entering AU;VT;MELBOURNE does the trick.
To find the appropriate name for your location, visit AccuWeather’s site and browse to the country / state / city you’re looking for. The URL will be a string similar to http://accuweather.com/index-world-forecast.asp?zipcode=AU;VT;MELBOURNE;. All you need to do is copy the part after “zipcode=”, paste it in to your Weather widget and sit back and enjoy your local forecast.
Update: Or even easier, just type your city’s name followed by enter. You can then select the correct location for your weather.
May 9th, 2005 at 23:01
Thanks Jimmy,
Hitting Enter didn’t occur to me and I was left wondering why I was likewise getting weather results for Sydney, Florida. The fact that the Aussie installations do not somehow automagically work this out for you seems a little ghey.
May 17th, 2005 at 8:32
It looks to me like Sydney doesn’t have any weather! Oh no!
May 22nd, 2005 at 23:57
I’ve found that your method doesn’t work well - I couldn’t get Adelaide weather with “AU;SA;ADELAIDE”. Instead, try typing in “Adelaide, Australia” and it worked for me…
May 23rd, 2005 at 14:49
Brett, strangely enough, Adelaide isn’t actually listed (though lots of other SA locations are) when you browse through AccuWeather’s site hence the reason why the above won’t work. Given this, I’m not quite sure why “Adelaide, Australia” works at all.
Bodog, I agree that Australian installations should automatically default to Australian locations. Seems a little remiss of Apple to not have done this.
May 27th, 2005 at 22:19
Good stuff re the Melbourne AU….Melbourne Florida only interest me because Jim Morrison was born there…
May 27th, 2005 at 22:21
Good stuff re the Melbourne AU….Melbourne Florida only interest me because Jim Morrison was born there…
June 5th, 2005 at 20:15
For Canberra, in the ACT the location is NSW (close enough I guess) but the weather is not actually correct, at nights it get’s below zero, but the weather never disaply’s a negative tempurature!?!
Anyone know of a another weather widget?
June 6th, 2005 at 14:43
Strange that the widget doesn’t display negative temperatures for Canberra - it certainly does for other cities (try La Paz, Bolivia for example). I’m not aware of any other weather widgets at the moment and I would think they would be rather low priority for people given that Apple already ships one.
June 14th, 2005 at 3:27
I had the Adelaide, South Australia on my weather widget working fine until a few days ago! Has anyone else found this?
I also tried to put in Melbourne and that doesn’t work for me now either. But i tried New York, and that worked fine.
So the Widget seems to be working okay, but not for Australian cities anymore? Can anyone give any insight?
June 14th, 2005 at 14:26
Yeah, seems the widget isn’t updating for Australian locations currently.
June 14th, 2005 at 17:51
glad to know that I’m not the only one suffering from a non-functioning weather widget atm.
It seems to drop in and out of functionality. Sometimes not updating for a day or so, returning ‘no cities found’ one minute and finding several the next, and then not updating the weather even when it does find Melbourne, Victoria…
*sigh*
June 15th, 2005 at 2:03
Hello - I live in the UK and found this forum looking for other people suffering from malfunctioning weather widgets - I’ve got exactly the same problem with it sometimes finding cities - then it doesnt -then it does - then it doesnt (and so on..) - but it certainly wont give me the temperature in London - though it will give me temperatures for all the ‘Londons’ in the USA. . . .
June 15th, 2005 at 19:27
Melbourne, Australia hasn’t been working for the last couple of days for me either…
June 17th, 2005 at 10:49
Same problem in Sydney, Aus…was working fine until about a week ago, now states no cities found…why in the world would they change this after it took us all so long to get away from the US cities!
June 17th, 2005 at 11:02
It looks like Accuweather has changed the format for how it specifies Australian cities from “zipcode=AU;VT;MELBOURNE;” to “zipecode=OCN;AU;VIC;MELBOURNE;”.
Unfortunately using the new syntax in the Dashboard widget doesn’t help (at least for Australian, I can still get the weather for La Paz!).
June 17th, 2005 at 16:42
Amazing. You are a genius. Imagine, hitting enter to bring up a list of places. I typed in Newcastle and kept getting England (I am in Australia).
Now all working fine. Well done and thanks.
June 17th, 2005 at 16:55
Working for me again, too. It must have been offline for a while with regard to the widgets, because the site had accurate info but the widget couldn’t find any Sydney, other than Florida, for about a week.
June 23rd, 2005 at 9:18
Yes, thanks for that. It now works in regional victoria - I typed “shepparton” and then hit enter, and it automatically changed to “Shepparton, Australia(VIC)”. I also had to select ºC and hit enter to get the ºF to change to ºC - just selecting it didn’t work. - working great now!!
June 23rd, 2005 at 9:38
Stopped working for Sydney again over the past few days. Not very reliable is it?
July 5th, 2005 at 22:00
This is working for me just fine:-
Sydney, Australia(NSW)
July 14th, 2005 at 11:43
[...] Thanks to Jimmy who worked this out for Melbourne and got me on the right track. [...]
July 16th, 2005 at 11:41
My weather widget hadnt been working for several days either. I originally had it set as Canberra, New South Wales.
I’ve typed in Canberra, New South Wales again and hit “enter” and it now displays as Canberra, Australia(ACT). It evens shows -ºC now too.
July 16th, 2005 at 14:01
There’s now a proper Australian weather widget where the data is sourced from the Bureau of Meteorology. http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/27348
July 19th, 2005 at 12:07
Thanks for the heads-up Dan. The widget you mention seems to be much more reliable but unfortunately it only seems to give the current temperature and doesn’t show any forecasts.
September 15th, 2005 at 11:03
I had the same trouble…….but was given the great clue of hitting “enter”.
try
Melbourne, Australia and then hit Enter….works a treat
September 27th, 2005 at 22:44
Thanks !
November 18th, 2005 at 9:07
The zip syntax “OCN;AU;STATE;CITY;” seems to work quite well for me. I now have “OCN;AU;ACT;BELCONNEN;” and “OCN;AU;SA;ADELAIDE” working fine. Thanks for the note.
Seems to be easiest to just find my cities on wwwa.accuweather.com, tracking through the options, and then cut and paste the “zipcode” from the address bar!
December 27th, 2005 at 7:56
I would like to have BOTH Centrgrade and Farenheit temperatures displayed at the SAME TIME in weather widget so that thoses who are still mentally crippled about translations from OZ (or Cook Islands) Centegrade temps and those who come see F temps from downunder and are wanting to see them in C can have BOTH. I believe this will HELP folks learn to understand C and F temps correlations better . Can you offer a suggestion how to do this ?
February 24th, 2006 at 13:53
try Degrees Downunder
December 19th, 2006 at 11:51
As an Aussie living in the U.S. I agree with Benjamin. Two copies of Degrees Down Under, one in Centigrade and the other in Farenheit does the trick.
Thanks terri
August 5th, 2007 at 11:14
thanks jimmy. was wondering why my weather on dashboard isnt working at all after entering ‘Singapore’. did a google and found your blog. after following your instructions, everything works like a charm.
thanks,
colin