What is it?

The KCCI School Net 8 Desktop Weather Client is your new way of getting weather information that is accurate and up-to-the-minute. But if this is the first time you've heard of the application, then here's your way of finding out about its history.

In July of 2003, I came across a KCCI School Net 8 weather viewer written in the Java™ language at the Iowa Environmental Mesonet at Iowa State University. Daryl Herzman wrote the application and published it as open source. So immediately the idea popped into my head to take it and turn it into a Windows® application.

I was in contact with Daryl telling him of my idea, and he provided me with technical information. With this I began to work. I started writing the application in Visual Basic, but immediately ran into problems. So the project was set aside in August of 2003 and not picked up again until the following December. When I told Daryl that I had picked it up again, I also gave him a possible release date of sometime the following January.

School unfortunately got in the way, and the application did not get released until February 24, 2004, when Daryl presented it at a School Net in-service KCCI was hosting that day. The KCCI School Net 8 Desktop Weather Client had made its debut, and the next version was being designed.

That version provided only a few features. It displayed the School Net weather information, downloaded the radar and forecast images, and auto-updated itself every few minutes. Not too terribly much. More was to be added to the newer version.

To get the newer version out, I decided to do something drastic: put my graduation on the line. I made the new version my senior project for a CMIS (computer science) program at Peru State College in Peru, Nebraska.

Originally slated for release May 6, 2004, some minor problems that were discovered about that time forced me to move the release back. Fixing problems requires more testing time as well, and this version was finally released June 1, 2004.