WeatherIcon
June 16th, 2010, 12:37pm by KelvinThe App Doctor’s App of the Week is WeatherIcon (free), the latest in a long line of weather-related programs for webOS. This particular app is intended to unobtrusively display your current weather by altering its icon to reflect the temperature and conditions. In this respect, its raison d’être is similar to SimpleWeather ($1) and Weather Dashboard Lite (free), both of which also attempt to serve as weather "widgets" that serve up data at a glance. Weather Dashboard runs constantly in the Notification Area, but that gets in the way if you like to clear your notifications often, as I do. SimpleWeather, of course, is not free, but it does seem comparable to WeatherIcon in both conception and implementation.
For its intended purpose, WeatherIcon is a great option. By virtue of its information-rich icon, it can even make the Wave Launcher useful, if you deem it worthy of one of the 4 spots on the LaunchBar, allowing you to check weather without interupting even a full screen video (Wave Launcher unfortunately does not work during 3D games). Launching the app reveals a well-featured weather app with a 3-day forecast, although it lacks satellite/ radar maps. App settings include update interval (settable down to the minute), location (either via zip code or real-time GPS update), and whether to show a notification banner during updates. Incidentally, it sports the best looking launch screen I’ve seen to date (I won’t spoil the surprise). I set it to update weather info every 30 minutes, and I personally have not noticed any additional battery drain on my Sprint Pre (which already polls twitter and facebook every 15 minutes). Overall, WeatherIcon gives us one fewer reason to ever look out the window.
June 16th, 2010 at 1:52 pm
So what was with the munged links in the original post?
June 16th, 2010 at 2:42 pm
Not sure… Poster lost something in the translation when switching between WYSIWYG and html modes (and I copy and pasted at some point). I fixed it in Poster right away, though, albeit not fast enough I see.
June 16th, 2010 at 3:45 pm
Funnily enough, the app I use for this is also called Weather Icon, and its functions are (1) to replace the temperature displayed on the icon for Apple’s weather app with the actual temperature, and more importantly, (2) display the temperature in the status bar. I know that similar apps exist for Android, and it’s great to be able to look at the phone, even when it’s locked, and see the temp. While I’m not sure the app is justification enough for jailbreaking, it’s a must if you’re already jailbroken.
I also use the weather display on IntelliScreen — it’s on Page 2, which means that, from my lock screen, a double-tap on the clock will show me the 5-day forecast.
June 18th, 2010 at 1:40 pm
You iPhone’s menu bar is starting to sound like my Windows System Tray! Anyway, I just found what might be the killer app for this, at least on webOS. Normally videos play full screen, hiding both the status bar and notification tray. Minimizing the card pauses the video. This morning, I was watching/listening to yesterdays’ BuzzOutLoud, but before I got off the train, I pulled up the Wave Launcher and saw the weather, and dropped the Wave back down, without interrupting video playback. Well, I thought it was cool…
June 30th, 2010 at 1:40 pm
At the time I wrote this review, there were a few bugs that were popping up related to the GPS autolocate function (it would eventually hang, necessitating a reboot). The developer has apparently addressed the issue with v 1.2.8, released today, and it seems to work fine now. Might be ready to go public with this one. Or get Flickr Addict on the front page.
June 30th, 2010 at 1:49 pm
Tonight, I’ll post FlickrAddict.
June 30th, 2010 at 4:57 pm
Flickr Addict is pretty solidly in the $1000 prize money category for the contest ending today, so no big deal either way.
http://palmhotapps.com/
Other notable rankings:
* I can’t believe Free Music Ringtones in #2, just a hair shy of Pandora for the $100K grand prize. Would Apple continue to ignore it if it were the overall winner? Great app, though.
* GolfPinFinder, at #6 in the paid category, just goes to show that Mike’s idea was worth at least $10K, not including the app revenue.