• WHAT: Weather for any place in the country on demand
  
• WHY: If you're traveling you'll want to know
• COST: FREE (cost of text message only)

There was a time when I was traveling a lot - no, not the way you're thinking about it - I mean A LOT (flying about 200,000 miles/year, spending 100+ nights/year in hotels, going through time zones faster than other people change their socks and generally having jet lag for 20 year... that's a lot).  The one thing I always wanted to know before I left was "What's the weather going to be there?"

If only services like this were available then <sigh>.  But they are now.  

4Info offers a number of very helpful services that are available via a simple text message (I'll be talking more about them in future posts) but the one that I find the absolute handiest of all is the weather.  If I'm thinking about a trip, or going biking (I do that a lot) and want to know what the weather is going to be like for the next few days, I send a message to 4Info with a simple request.  Here's how the weather request works:

1. Create a text message with the letter "w" (you can spell out "weather" if you want, but this is a whole lot faster) and the zip code you want to know the weather for.  If you don't know the zip code you can use the name of the city and state (e.g., Palm Springs, CA).
2. Send the text message to 44636 (4INFO).
3. Read the weather.  (Yes, that's really all there is to it.)

There's no charge for the service other than the cost of a text message.  4Info also offers sports scores, horoscopes, flight status and a number of other information services but the thing that I want to know about almost every day is the weather.  Now, you can also sign up for a daily weather report (also free) which will be delivered to your phone every day at a time you specify for the area you want.  I get that, too, but typically find myself wanting to know the weather somewhere else (family, travel, etc.) pretty often.  Other services (Yahoo, Google, etc.) offer these weather reports, too, but I find the one from 4Info to be quick, easy and well-formatted.  

It's a breeze.  (Or maybe it's rain... I don't know - I'll have to check the weather.)