A recent television commercial jogged my memory about a desired device that I had thought about in the past. I have no idea what the commercial is for, but near the beginning of it a man gets out of bed in his futuristic home, and while he is doing his morning routine in the bathroom mirror, a weather forecast is playing in the mirror. Although I desire a weather forecast at other times, getting dressed is easily the most important time. In fact, there is a web site whose entire premise is that the weather dictates your clothing choices. Pure genius.

What I want is that futuristic man’s weather mirror, but in today’s world. I know it’s either a) out there already in some sort of weather geek’s catalog, or b) hackable using wireless technology and some sort of computer programs and device. Most simple home weather forecast devices on the market estimate the conditions based on the current conditions when you set it up, and then the changing temperature and barometric pressure. I want my device to be a much simpler device, much like the getting the weather from television. It’s figured out and distilled for me, and given to me in the simplest form possible.

All I want to do is wake up, go to my dresser, and see the following:

• The temperature and conditions right now
• The temperature and conditions at intervals later in the day
• The most minimal amount of data I need to survive: temp, conditions and wind
• Nothing scientific (no barometric pressure, moon phase, etc)
• No clock (who doesn’t know what time it is?)

It also might be handy to have a configuration program as well, so that I might be able to change what information I see on the device, or perhaps changing the intervals, or perhaps even setting specific times that I want the forecast for (like if I know I’m going out at 10pm, I would want to know what it will be like outside.)

One way to execute this idea might be creating a program that grabs the weather from the Internet, parses it, and spits it out over wireless to this small device. Perhaps this device is a PDA? Who knows?

Any ideas or examples or existing products out there, anyone?

(If it helps, I have an old Handspring Visor and a (very, very) old Apple Newton.)