Inside Tracking the Weatherman

Bostonist loves the Inside Track ladies at the Herald. They’ve got their finger on the tiny trickle of celebrity and athlete gossip coming from the Hub. As was pointed out earlier this year, they were the only ones who could keep track of The Departed. But this morning they’re knocking on the Internet and Bosonist’s “Weather or Not” man Todd Gross. Set to make an appearance this morning on WAAF, before Todd went live, the Track ladies had lambasted him for the Tip Jar on his newly revamped blog-style weather discussion on ToddGross.com. Perhaps we’re a bit partisan in this struggle, seeing as Todd agreed to answer our weather questions, but we think he’s doing a bit more than weather on the web.

The Inside Track took issue with the minimum tip of $2 (which we're sure is less after to Todd after paypal fees). Sure, not everyone has a Tip Jar. But there are some good people out there on the ‘net doing something different and filling a niche, like Joel Brown at HubArts, who use just such a mechanism to pay for server space and perhaps a tall cup o’ dunkies every now and again to keep them going. We have to admit they’re right about one thing. If you want free weather, just go anywhere. They mention the new Channel 7 Chief, Pete Bouchard, and weather.com. Bostonist is also particularly fond of accuweather.com and wunderground.com (affectionately, "the weather underground"), or even just pull up theNational Weather Service if all you want is the forecast of what the temperature is going to be tomorrow. Shoot, you could even come over to Bostonist where we just toyed around with the way we display weather. The Internet allows Todd Gross to engage in technical discussions and tell his site's readers why weather is happening, not just what weather will be happening. Tune him in on AAF, ToddGross.com, or keep your URLs pointing to Bostonist for the next Weather or Not.