CloudSpotter (for iPhone) Review

When I reviewed CloudSpotter (for iPhone) a few weeks after the app was launched in June, I noted that the one real flaw in this app—which lets people photograph and identify clouds in the sky—was the regularity with which the CloudStream photo gallery crashed. Since I downloaded a recent update (v.1.0.2), CloudSpotter has operated crash-free. With an improved user experience added to its already impressive set of attributes, CloudSpotter is now easily worthy of an Editors' Choice as an educational app.

Know Your Clouds
CloudSpotter (for iPhone) takes a refreshingly literal approach to the idea of "cloud-based app": it's all about "analog" clouds of the fluffy, wispy, rainy, or iridescent ilk. It's a fun, educational, and challenging tool to help you identify, understand, and appreciate the wide variety of clouds that float above our world.

The app's concept is simple: it lets you photograph clouds in the sky, identify them with the aid of the app's "cloud library" or its step-by-step identifier, upload them to your collection of cloud photos, and wait for the app's volunteer staff to verify (or nix) your identifications. You earn stars and badges for cloud identifications (and can compete with other cloud spotters in doing so), and occasionally get your images displayed in the app's gallery for others to see. You might even help a new cloud type to gain recognition, and contribute to NASA climate research.

CloudSpotter, optimized for the iPhone 5 , is compatible with iPhones starting with the 3GS, iPads, and iPods touch, if they run iOS 6.0. I tested it on an iPhone 5, as its camera is better than that of my iPad 2, the phone is far easier to point up at the sky and snap a picture, and, unlike my tablet, it's generally connected to the Internet when I'm outside. I did install the app on my iPad; as content is scaled for the iPhone, the text suffers some degradation when enlarged to iPad size, though photos were easier to see on the large screen.

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The War on Blue-Sky Thinking
CloudSpotter is the brainchild of the Cloud Appreciation Society, an organization founded in 2005 to foster understanding and appreciation of clouds. The society's website lets its 32,000 members share their cloud-related observations, questions, and photos. From the society's manifesto: "We believe that clouds are unjustly maligned and that life would be immeasurably poorer without them." and "We pledge to fight 'blue-sky thinking' wherever we find it. Life would be dull if we had to look up at cloudless monotony day after day."

The first time you open the app, you're treated to a short, informative, and unabashedly cutesy (as in clouds and raindrops with faces) video showing how some clouds form out of water vapor and return it as rain. The app is suitable for anyone with a desire to learn about clouds, and for the most part the text is more descriptive than technical.

CloudSpotter Basics
Most of CloudSpotter's functions work only in portrait mode. At the top of the screen is a headline letting you know what section you're in. Most of the screen area displays content, which varies depending on which section you're in, and along the bottom are five tabs, one for each section. The first tab is the Cloud Library, which depicts 40 different cloud types, split into 3 sections: "The Ten Main Cloud Types" (cumulus, stratus, nimbostratus, cirrus, etc.); Other Cloud Types (everything from contrails and fog to tuba (funnel cloud) and some exotic varieties (that can earn you 5 stars for spotting) including noctilucent, Kelvin-Helmholtz—which looks like the crests of ocean waves—and the dark and dramatic-looking asperatus.

Each cloud type is depicted with a thumbnail, crossed by a blue ribbon showing the number of stars (from 1 to 5) that collecting it is worth. Clicking on the thumbnail enlarges the image and lets you scroll through up to about 7 additional images. It also provides descriptive text; identifies the cloud type's altitude (high, mid, low, ground, multiple, or varied); whether or not it's associated with precipitation; cloud types that can be mistaken for it; and cloud types often seen in conjunction with it.

The descriptive text is written for a general audience, providing details of the cloud's appearance, characteristics, and formation. It escapes being dry by maintaining a light, conversational tone: "If you've never spotted a Cumulus cloud, then you ought to get out more."

In Search of New Cloud Types
Back to asperatus: it is not officially recognized as a cloud variety, but cloud spotters are looking to change that. There hasn't been a new addition to the International Cloud Atlas, published by the World Meteorological Organization, since Cirrus inoculus was added in 1951, but in 2009 the founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society proposed that asperatus (whose name is Latin for rough, because of its resemblance to a turbulent sea) be considered as a new cloud variety. The idea has gained the support of some meteorologists, including Great Britain's Royal Meteorological Society.

To gain official recognition from the World Meteorological Organization, however, requires understanding of the cloud's characteristics as well as the conditions under which it forms, and cloud spotters worldwide have contributed images and videos of asperatus to that end. By photographing this rare phenomenon, users of the CloudSpotter app can not only earn 5 stars and a badge, they're participating in useful research that could lead to the official recognition of a whole new variety of cloud.

Asperatus has been surprisingly abundant in CloudSpotter images so far, with more than 200 confirmed sightings since the app launched. The only cloud type among the 40 included with the app without a confirmed CloudSpotter sighting is nacreous, followed by noctilucent—the one other nighttime cloud type represented in the app—with 2 sightings.

Observations from CloudSpotter users will also be put to good scientific use in helping to calibrate NASA's Ceres (Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System) instruments on three climate satellites that measure the amount of sunlight that is reflected back into space from the Earth. This information is used to calculate the surface temperature, but the amount and type of cloud cover—some of which, clouds over snow for instance, can be hard to discern from space—also affects the temperature. By using a worldwide database of sightings of different types of clouds from the app, scientists should be able to reduce errors in their temperature observations, and better understand the complex and crucial role that clouds play in regulating global temperatures.

Continue Reading: Cloud Collecting

Cloud Collecting

Cloud Collecting
Clouds that you've photographed and submitted appear in My Collection under the second tab. At the top of the screen are the number of stars and badges you've earned, out of a possible 114 stars and 20 badges. Below it, the badges are displayed carousel-style; when you've earned a badge, the black-and-white image turns to color. You get a badge for finding your first cloud, for spotting 3 different clouds in a day, for identifying each of the 10 main cloud types, for photographing asperatus, for having one of your cloud photos selected as Cloud of the Day, and more. The ultimate badge, Triumph in the Skies, is for those who have identified all 40 clouds and optical phenomena featured in the app.

Once you submit a cloud image, it appears in the My Clouds section below the badges. There, you can see the clouds you've identified (as well as the ones you've misidentified, shown with a line through the cloud name), and the number of stars each is worth. (You only get stars for your first identification of each type.) When you've uploaded a cloud photo, but before your identification has been verified or nixed, its thumbnail appears grayed out, with clock hands in front of it.

The middle tab, Spot a Cloud, has a camera icon. Once opened, pressing a second camera icon snaps a picture of the cloud. You can identify it either by choosing a cloud type from the library, or using the step-by-step identifier to home in on it based on its characteristics. Once you've made your identification, you then upload the image and wait for the CloudSpotter staff to verify your identification (i.e. "render a verdict"). This can, in my experience, take anywhere from less than an hour to the better part of a day.

I had occasion to do so, after I'd seen and photographed the top part of a faint 22-degree solar halo but my identification in the admittedly blurred photo went unverified. I received an email in response saying that my identification had indeed been correct, and offering to credit me for it. I declined, as it was also pointed out that since the photos of identified cloud types are posted in the public gallery, they're instructive for newcomers, and that a photo that doesn't clearly show the cloud phenomenon in question could prove confusing. I mentioned that I didn't think I'd have too much trouble finding a respectable solar halo, which proved to be the case.

CloudSpotter (for iPhone)

4.5

Editors' Choice

See It

$2.99 at Apple.com

MSRP $2.99

Pros

• Fun.
• Challenging.
• Informative.
• Scientifically useful.
• Simple to use.
• Suitable for a wide audience.
• Well supported with text and photographs.

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Cons

• Limited interactivity.
• No social media integration.

The Bottom Line

CloudSpotter (for iPhone) is a fun and educational tool to help you identify and understand the huge variety of clouds that ply our skies.