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FEMA's presidential alerts are an easy target for spoofing attacks
Last fall, FEMA conducted the first nationwide test of its Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) system when it beamed a "presidential alert" to all capable phones in the US. WEA has long been used to send alerts about missing children, natural disasters and other dangerous events. But a few years ago, the FCC voted to expand WEA so that, among other changes, government officials could write longer messages. Now, researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder warn that WEA's presidential alerts can be easily spoofed.
FEMA and National Weather Service launch Wireless Emergency Alert System
While it's a little later than expected, the free SMS emergency notification system has now gone live. Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) messages will be delivered to cell towers in affected areas, which will then broadcast them to all compatible devices in their range. While the system is looking to cover over 97 percent of the country, it's being gradually rolled out across carriers. Sprint and Verizon are both apparently ready for action and while we haven't heard about the status of T-Mobile or AT&T, the National Weather Service has stated that hundreds of smaller carriers haven't yet enabled the broadcasts. However, not all phones -- especially the more elderly bricks still in circulation -- will work with the system. To check whether your weighty cellular still passes muster, hit up the compatible device list at the CTIA link below.
Weather Wow for iOS gives you news and weather together
Weather Wow is a clever iOS app that gives you the local information you probably want the most in one package, which is news and weather. The US $0.99 universal app gives you the ability to add as many locations for information that you want, with a simple GUI with a + to add the cities. Both weather and news get selected as a result of that choice. Switching between cities is a matter of touching a left or right pointing arrow. You get a nicely animated look at the current conditions, then a four day forecast scrolls up the screen. After that a few local news stories appear, some from your local paper and some from national news sources when your local area is mentioned. It all works quite well, and I think overall the app is useful. There are a couple of negatives, though. First, no matter what the weather, you see a spinning bright sun graphic. The graphic should match the weather, with a graphic for clouds, rain, snow or whatever, because seeing the sun graphic all the time is misleading. (Update: The developer points out, correctly, that sometimes there are different graphics. For example, overcast shows a gray background, but displaying a bright sun for mostly cloudy and completely clear locations is not visually helpful. Likewise, I went to a city where the app said it was raining, and did not see a rain graphic, just cloudy. There needs to be better parsing of the data to display a more useful graphic.) I'd also like to see the app be location aware. If I'm traveling, the app should use the GPS to find where I am and deliver me local news and weather. I don't want to type my location in every time. That's especially true if I'm in a place with a long name, like, oh, Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan. Weather Wow is a nice little app, and I find I check it out often. With a few tweaks it could be really terrific. Check the gallery for some screen shots and you can check out the perennially sunny skies. %Gallery-151095%
