AccuWeather New Media Internship

   

Introduction
During the summer of 2005, I completed an internship with the New Media Department of AccuWeather in State College, Pennsylvania. I served as a New Media Programmer from May 23, 2005 to August 12, 2005. During my time at AccuWeather, I gained real world experience in the information technology field, and learned how to apply skills that I have learned in my Information Sciences and Technology courses in a business environment.

About AccuWeather
Read about AccuWeather’s history and business philosophy here

Projects
Below is a list of some of the projects that I worked on at AccuWeather.

• Assisted in the design and development of an online photo gallery for weather photographs
  • Utilized PHP and SQL
  • Integrated the gallery for AccuWeather’s free, premium, and professional services
  • Customized off-the-shelf software to fit AccuWeather’s needs
  • Fixed bugs
  • Customized the CSS Stylesheets for the gallery
  • This gallery is available here
• Implemented the exclusive “Frizz Index”
  • Utilized an algorithm that used relative humidity and dewpoint values to determine how “frizzy” one’s hair will be on a given day
  • Created the ASP process page for this form
  • Worked with a hair product company to properly implement the form, which submitted user input to a Flash “Frizz-O-Meter”
  • This index was available on the AccuWeather.com website for several weeks
• Developed weather webpages for a major television network affiliate in New York City, NY
  • Created ASP pages that displayed AccuWeather forecast data
  • Fixed bugs
  • Integrated AccuWeather components into the network’s new site design
• Researched and implemented a solution for keeping track of bugs on AccuWeather’s websites and services
• Evaluated solutions for source control management
  • Analzyed both open source and commercial source control software
  • Presented possible solutions to development team
  • Considered features that the developers needed as well as budget
• Worked on the development of AccuWeather.com’s Wireless website
  • Developed the admnistrative backend to add and edit wireless services
  • Assisted in the design of the page flow for the site
• Worked on several inhouse projects to assist employees

Skills Used and Developed
My internship helped me develop many technical and business skills.

• Technical/Programming: HTML, ASP, PHP, SQL, JavaScript, CSS
• Problem Based Learning
• Teamwork
• Communication
• Presentation skills
• Organization
• Time Management

Conclusion
My time as an intern at AccuWeather was overwhelmingly positive. I worked with an excellent team of programmers and designers who were always willing to help me with my projects. In only a few months, I was able to work on many different and interesting projects that helped introduce me to the professional field of information technology.