Important Web Site Changes

Content-length: 9512 Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Important Web Site Changes

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January 29, 1997
To our Valued Subscribers:

On behalf of our team of meteorologists at our Corporate Forecast Center in Pittsburgh, I wanted to take this opportunity to welcome you to another exciting year with American Weather Concepts! This year we are planning exciting new enhancements to our Web page that will provide you with greater reliability and planning flexibility for whatever your professional or recreational needs may be.

Before detailing these additions, however, I would like to address some of the more recent enhancements to our current site. First, as you may have noticed, our national coverage of Nexrad Doppler Radar now update every 15 minutes (not found anywhere else), and our Eastern Pacific Ocean, East Asia, and western Pacific IR images update every 30 minutes and 3 hours, respectively. Now you can track weather activity in your immediate or remote geographical location with greater accuracy and capability right from your own computer.

In order to provide you with the ability to view such state-of-the-art radar images from across the globe, we must have the most advanced hardware and software. Currently, for this reason, we have upgraded to a "T1" frame relay connection with our Internet service provider, who is also upgrading to a larger, more powerful web server. The end result allows us to quickly send more data so you will receive the most recent and reliable radar and forecast images. We're confident that you will notice the difference; which brings me to the next issue: Future Enhancements!

We're going International! QuickCast will soon include additional features that will span to Alaska, Canada, Europe, the Caribbean, and Central/South America (other countries will be added later). Also, QuickCast will feature Extended Forecasts, Severe Weather Warnings and Forecast Discussions, and the ability to navigate more easily to local radar and satellite images within the site. European satellite pictures will shortly be added. And, the national & regional radar mosaics will update every 15 minutes, like the individual sites. Lastly, FlyteTrax is undergoing system upgrades for faster, more reliable flight tracking information. And once again, FlyteTrax will continue to be offered without charge!

At AWC our primary mission is to provide our subscribers with the most accurate, reliable and customized forecasts, which is why we continue to refine and upgrade our Web site with the latest hardware and software this industry has to offer. Unfortunately, these enhancements have increased our operational costs, which now require us to amend our user fees for this site. Effective March 1st , the fee for the Basic service will be $5.00/month with no limit to either the amount of data you can download or the number of times you download, and the Enhanced service will be an additional $3.00/month. To gain access to the individual NEXRAD Doppler Radar sites you must subscribe to the Enhanced service. All current credit card subscribers will be billed the amended fees at renewal time.

My team of forecasters and myself certainly value your business and have always felt your feedback provides us with the direction this company must take in order to be the Premier Weather site on the Internet. This is why we sincerely request your comments on recent changes to our service and any additional enhancements. Please address them to myself, Scott Breit, President, at:

wxmaster@weatherconcepts.com

As always you are invited to contact us at our Corporate Forecast Center at 1-412-635-0667.

I am looking forward to hearing from you.