I haven’t run into any surfers with iPhones, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t out there. Today, Oakley (the guys that make those hideous Thump sunglasses) and Surfline announced their free app: Surf Report.
There’s only one other surf-forecasting app, GreenRoom Surf Forecasts, available today and it costs $2.99. It’s limited to spots in California, but you can get a seven-day forecast whereas Surf Report only provides up to three days. However, Oakley’s app is free and you can’t beat that.
With Surfline powering the Oakley app, surfers now have access to spots all over the world with vital stats like air temp, water temp, tide charts, swell breakdown, wind, sunrise/sunset and a brief synopsis for each spot. Projected conditions and weather are provided for the following three days as well. Using the GPS coordinates of your iPhone you can see what’s going on at a handful of spots near you that are within a certain distance that you set.
Driving directions are also included via map links in case you’re going somewhere new. All of the beaches are well known, so the few hidden spots that are left in the world won’t be revealed, but this will surely bring on another wave of iPhone toting kooks to the already crowded lineups.
A community tab launches news surrounding Oakley team riders, profiles, photos and videos for those interested.
“I haven’t run into any surfers with iPhones”
do you surf?
i downloaded it this morning, been waiting to see if surfline would do something, their mobile site is excellent, this is even better!
I have an iPhone and I surf/bodyboard. I just download this application and it’s freakin awesome. I love it!
Out of character for Oakley to make anything free..
Yeah you must not know any surfers.
I don’t exactly wait around in the parking lot to see what people have and, yes, I do surf.
which parking lot?
I don’t run any surfers yet.
http:///www.oxyshopping.com
“Oakley (the guys that make those hideous Thump sunglasses) ”
Yes, and they make one of the best digital camera systems in the world (Oakley RED), what’syour point?
Oakley doesn’t make the RED cameras, sprfkr. Jannard just happened to found both and they have nothing to do with each other.
Just an FYI. Both of you are correct. A lot of the team that worked on the oakley electronic products helped get the Red cameras going. Once the team was properly formed at red they took it and ran home. Doing most of the work.
(A lot of the design of it though still happened at Oakley, as far as I understand. I think a lot of Oakley people actually were moved over to Red.)
Peter Ha… you surf, like surf surf, or internet browse surf? Just because you own a wetsuit and board doesn’t make you a surfer. Stick to the web.
And what makes you a “real surfer?”
since i’ve been rather obnoxious I’ll leave my real name out of it, sorry.
Hey Rick, whats the “swell breakdown” for this weekend. Oh rad man, breakers are coming!
Yeah, it breaks down the different swells for you. Your point?
like for west coast surfers when the north east swell is coming?
Peter do you sit around the parking lot instead waiting to watch people change? We can tell you’re a kook because you take surfline seriously. They haven’t gotten a prediction right in years…
Looks like the conversation turned into “who’s a real surfer and who’s not?”
Who cares?
Oh, and I can tell there are a bunch of surfers with iPhone.
I just downloaded the application. It is real nice.
The break locations are just a lat,lon placemark in the Maps application. It is a nice feature if you want standard Surfline labels for the breaks, but they aren’t very accurate for my south LA breaks (as breaks have many different names for the different groups and generations that surf them).
It is super slow over the edge network, but having a tide report, swell report, temperature and break conditions all in one mobile application is pretty nice. All for free too.
I see it being used as something to check while stuck in 405 traffic, and leading to many “get off at rosecrans, and just hit it up” moments.
That’s it! I’m banning all of you.
One time I tried to surf, got tired after about 45 minutes, and heaved my lunch into the ocean. True story.
I am not a real surfer. Here’s my badge.
Peter, welcome to the the retarded/hypocritical world of surfing (or, shall I say, real surfing). Before I even looked at the comments, I laughed because I knew that you were going to get skewered. Surfers preach the aloha spirit, with peace, love, and tolerance for everybody. But, in practice, surfers are giant, non-inclusive dicks.
You’re welcome to bring your softop to Lindamar anytime :)
I failed to realize that having the “real surfer” moniker meant you were the only ‘real surfer’ on the Web.
Thanks for the invite, but I’ll bring my funboard :)
I’ve been waiting for Surfline to make a native app and so far it looks awesome! The only thing I wish they left out was the Oakley Community stuff, but hey its free so can’t complain too much. Hopefully in the future they’ll update it with some live cams and notifications when your local spot is going off.
Oakley is smart – they’re also sponsoring Snow Reports on Facebook…
http://apps.facebook.com/snowreports
This is so awesome, exactly what I’ve been hoping for with my iphone. Super smart for Oakley, thouh you have to wonder why Surfline wouldn’t just do this themselves 100%. Great news after a long Monday at work.
cuz dude, they sold it to oakley as an ad deal.
What really rocks is Surfline Pro, which shows the positions of sharks on Google Maps, in /realtime/.
Yay, finally. I normally use CostalWatch but this even has my home break in (Manly, NSW, Aus) – 1 foot today, which is why I am working…
I’ve been using GreenRoom, pretty sweet app based off of spitcast.com’s surf reports for the California coast.
GreenRoom’s site is here: http://theoddbit.com/
Highly recommended. :-)
“dude checkout the next generation in surfboard technology it’s my new nimrod 7000 surfboard with wave tracking GPS technology and real time satellite imagery.”
All the surfers I know have iPhones. I live in Hawaii
you can check out the other app, greenroom surf forecasts, at:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=291552585&mt=8
The app is cool from a technology standpoint, but from a surfer standpoint, it’s pretty useless. This is a less useful version of Surfline mobile because it doesn’t have the live video feeds (which are the only real, albeit marginally, useful part of Surfline). As far as forecasting goes, Surfline is a joke.
i pee on my wetsuit after i’m done surfing. does that make me a kook?
Everyone I know who surfs has an iPhone and we have all been waiting for Surfline to create an App. Excellent.
“From a surfer standpoint, it’s pretty useless. ” – wrong. Swell height, period, direction, wind and tide. Who cares about live video.
Wow I am so excited ( Sarcasm ) Surfline exists for the generation of add revenue, therefor the more Surfline hypes a coming swell the more you will return to check the site, thus increasing viewer-ship and driving up CPM’s and Cha-ching….
Do not get me wrong, I subscribe and love the news and videos,I just don’t get my forecasts and reports there !
I Live in San Francisco and am a current surfline customer (79.00 / year for forecasts) – wish this app was on the Google G1 phone as well. it is painful browsing the surfline site with a standard phone browser. Especially when I am out of 3G range…
Try mobile.surfline.com – works great, super fast, has premium forecast features if you log in. I actually prefer it to the Oakley App as it has buoy data and streaming cameras (although calling it streaming is a bit of a stretch)
Anyone know who Oakley got to make the app? I don’t believe Oakley or Surfline has this kind of developmental power inhouse.
In v1 of Surf Report we used WebKit for a couple of views, which we’re replacing with native UIKit interfaces in a future version (http://drnicwilliams.com/2008/11/10/to-webkit-or-not-to-webkit-within-your-iphone-app/) to remove a bunch of speed issues. That will be very sweet.
More screenshots from the developers: http://mocra.com/projects/surfreport/
Interesting how the comment from Brian speculating about the inhouse development capabilities of oakley/surfline is followed directly by a response from the developer. Both companies have pretty involved sites, why would you think that? In politics, this is known as a “plant”.
I have an iPhone and I’ve been a Surfline paid subscriber for 5 years – Great site/service.
So there are surfers with iPhones! Kinda glad about that as I launched another surfing app yesterday – Surf Log. I’m independent so don’t have quite the same financial/marketing power, but doing my best with it…
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=296054153&mt=8
Thanks for this. Great app, that will be using this summer for sure! I talk about it on my show and linked here. Here is the episode:
http://dailybuzz.mobuzz.tv/shows/surf_dance_and_scientific_searches
Cheers!
We have developed a Snowboarding game for iPhone and are thinking of making a surfing version – do you think there are many surfers with iPhones?