The ability to watch Australia's weather evolve in the palm of your hand has literally become a reality since the launch of Simon Coggins' iPhone application, BOMRadar.

Simon, one of CQUniversity's Senior Systems Engineers from the Information Technology Division, developed BOMRadar initially as a hands-on programming trial to learn more about iPhone applications.

An image now available by phone

This initiative is explained at the ITD blog homepage: http://cqunitech.blogspot.com/ (in an article reproduced below).

"This was my first attempt at iPhone application programming, and I've found there's no better way to learn than by trying it yourself," Simon said.

Since its launch on September 11 2008, BOMRadar has been an instant success:
· It was ranked number one free iPhone application for the first 2½ weeks after its launch on the iPhone App Store
· To date, the application has been downloaded by 37'000 users
· For 4 weeks it remained one of the top 20 free iPhone applications in the country.

Simon designed BOMRadar's unique weather interface by using the latest radar shots from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

The program uses the radar images to generate an accurate display of current cloud patterns and their movement across Australia.

"I've received 101 reviews so far, the majority of which have been positive," Simon said.

"Some of the feedback has been really interesting. I‘ve gotten messages from pilots telling me they use it to look up what the weather's like at their next destination.

"I've also had feedback from people out on their boats. They use BOMRadar to watch the weather for wherever they're heading.

"One of the interesting features of BOMRadar is that the program cycles the last 4 radar images from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology's web site to produce an accurate animation of the direction and density of clouds and their rain patterns.

"The Bureau updates its online radar images every 10 minutes, so users can be confident the cloud patterns conveyed by BOMRadar are relatively current.

"The application gives a fairly good indication of the direction of the rainfall and the density of the clouds. The denser the clouds the more chance there is for rain.

"Rockhampton has been known in the past to get fairly bad storms during summer, so I decided to develop an application that would be useful and because it was an area I was interested in."

When asked if there would be a second instalment of BOMRadar, Simon replied:

"I'm still looking at adding new features such as a ‘locate me' option which uses GPS in the iPhone to find radars in range of your current position.

"I want to add forecast information, including current temperatures etc; and develop a favourite's list option so that users don't have to scroll through the menu's to find the radars they need."

Simon developed BOMRadar using his own time and resources. The fact this initiative was driven completely by self motivation and learning makes the development and success of BOMRadar even more impressive and inspiring.