The Livestrong skin changes the look of Firefox.
(Credit: Mozilla)Mozilla announced a variety of new skins for its Firefox Web browser Tuesday. Many of the skins are from well-known brands and fashion designers. According to the company, All American Rejects-, Lady Gaga-, and No Doubt-themed music skins are currently available. Those looking for fashion designs can have a BCBG Max Azria skin, while those who want to support Lance Armstrong and the fight against cancer can download the Livestrong skin. Many more free skins are available on Mozilla's new "Personas" page.
The Weather Channel has launched the second version of its iPhone app, the company announced Tuesday. The new version is ad-supported. Users who are interested in the advertisements can click on them and check out the advertiser's page without closing the app. More importantly, the new app now features in-motion weather maps, metro traffic cameras, a snapshot of weather conditions, and animation radar. The free app is available now in the Apple App Store.
Music search engine SeeqPod filed a petition for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court Monday. According to the court filing, SeeqPod decided to file for protection after responding to pressure from the music industry, which has slapped the service with billions of dollars in lawsuits that it might not survive. SeeqPod has not disclosed any information about the filing.
Mobile advertising firm AdMob has launched the iPhone Download Exchange program, which will allow developers to increase their own iPhone app downloads by advertising the app in other programs. AdMob will be inking deals with developers who want to participate in the network. All the apps that are included in the deals will feature ads advertising other apps that are also in the network. According to the company, AdMob already has over 1,000 iPhone applications in the Download Exchange and, with the wider release, it expects more companies to sign up soon.
An artist named Helmut Smits has decided that working with paint isn't enough, so instead he is showing his art to people on Google Earth. Dubbed "Dead Pixel in Google Earth," Smits burned a 32x32-inch piece of grass in a field in the Netherlands. According to the artist, that patch of burned grass represents 1 pixel in Google Earth at a distance of 1 kilometer, or 0.62 miles, above the ground. Smits says the dead pixel is "concept art" and will be left on display for those in the field or people looking for it in Google Earth.
Photo- and video-sharing site Photobucket announced Tuesday that its application programming interface has been available for one year. To date, over 1,800 developers have signed up for the API and the company said that a variety of applications were created, helping it reach 55 million monthly unique visitors. The API is still available on Photobucket's site.
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
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Just in time for Groundhog Day, I pulled together a small collection of desktop weather applications for checking everything from current weather conditions to 15-day forecasts and detailed readings on wind and clouds. For those with modest forecast needs, Yahoo and Google both offer a small, attractive widget that shows the temperature at a glance. The only problem is, you have to have already installed a much larger desktop application in order to get the tiny widget.
On Friday, AccuWeather released an even simpler solution--a small weather-checker for Windows, Mac, and Linux that runs on the free Adobe AIR platform (Windows|Mac). AccuWeather's widget is about as basic as they come, with just enough information for the daily or five-day forecaster. There are daytime and nighttime readings, icons that communicate clear, cloudy, or rainy conditions at a glance, and the ability to change locations. Click a button and a five-day forecast pops out. Click another to switch between Fahrenheit and Celsius, between light and dark text, and to get a read on one of your saved locations. If you click a temperature itself, AccuWeather takes you to its Web site, where more information abounds.
The new AIR application isn't quite as polished looking as Yahoo and Google's widgets, but it makes for a convenient download that supplies desktop meteorologists the weather-watching essentials.
Even if you're not one to trust a groundhog's shadow as your weather vane, watching a pet rodent emerge from a hole before hundreds of onlookers is a fascinating North American ritual. The rest of us may not have the prognosticating meteorological savvy of a Punxsutawney Phil, Buckeye Chuck, or Shubenacadie Sam, but on February 2, we can have the next best thing--weather widgets and applications.
Here are some of our favorite ways to read the mercury on our Windows PCs.
Weather Watcher Live
A full, but well-ordered display, detailed forecast, animated map, and severe weather alerts are just a few reasons to download this free, longtime favorite. Hour-by-hour forecasts, wind, rain, and dew point particulars, plus a ticker of weather-related news stories, are a handful more.
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Yahoo Widgets Engine
Small, light on resources, slickly designed, and persistent, Yahoo's attractive, free weather widget gives you a basic reading of current conditions at a glance. Another click brings you a multiday forecast for any city of your choice, and a swelling gallery of user-generated widgets gives you greater weather widget alternatives online.
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Google Desktop
What's true for Yahoo Widgets hold for Google's version of its desktop software, which throws a search bar in with its free desktop enhancer. Google supplies its own weather widget, with several user-submitted widgets, such as a weather globe.
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Weather Depot
For U.S. residents, the free version of Weather Depot provides plenty of maps and current temperatures for five saved locations. An hour-by-hour planner and 7-day planner round out the tools. The premium version gives you a 14-day look ahead and detailed conditions for everything ranging from soil temperature to severe weather forecasts.
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Before I get to this weeks apps, I found out about some bargain basement prices for a small selection of apps from Ambrosia Software. Aki Mahjong Mobile, Mondo Solitaire, and Mr. Sudoko are all on sale for 99-cents at the app store until November 30th (usually $9.99). If you have any interest in these games, now is the time to start downloading!
For this weeks apps, I'm including one free and one paid app.
Choose the 36-hour option to get detailed forecasts for your location
(Credit: CNET Networks)The Weather Channel for iPhone and iPod touch offers a wealth of weather information beyond what you get from the free app that's already on your iPhone. In addition to local temperatures, you can check out hourly, 36-hour, and 10-day forecasts, conditions for specific landmarks in a neighborhood, and you can share weather information with anyone in your iPhone address book. You can also view current weather videos (launches in YouTube) and look at local severe weather alerts. My favorite feature is the ability to view weather maps and pick layers to show where it's raining or whether its cloudy, or what the temperature is in specific locations. If you want more weather info, download this free app.
Check the top of the screen to see how many of each block type you have
(Credit: CNET Networks)Aurora Feint II: The Arena ($7.99) is the sequel to one of the first games out for the iPhone, Aurora Feint: The Beginning. Like its predecessor, most of the action in the game requires that you move and match three or more blocks together to get points. Stringing together matches increases your combo multiplier so a certain amount of strategy is required to get the most points. While you match blocks, you collect minerals and crystals which can be used to buy items that make your mining easier.
What sets this new version apart from other puzzle and blocks games is the asynchronous massive multiplayer component, The Arena. In the Arena you can play against other players ghosts or create your own ghost so players can challenge your best effort. You also can chat with other players in The Tavern and brag about past winnings, though the game automatically gives you the option to brag or complain at the end of a match. With solid gameplay, RPG elements that let you upgrade, and online multiplayer, Aurora Feint II: The arena has plenty of replay value. At first I thought $7.99 might be too much for an upgrade to the free game, but once I got to playing and challenging other players I realized it was definitely worth it.
What's your latest greatest iPhone App? Are you happy to see a more comprehensive weather app for iPhone? What's your screen name in Aurora Feint so I can destroy your high score? Let me know in the comments!
Weather apps have been a fixture on the iPhone and iPod touch since Day 1, but it wasn't until this week that it gained a full-featured contribution from The Weather Channel.
San Francisco's forecast today.
(Credit: CNET)The free Weather Channel Interactive Interactive makes use of tabs to cram in localized weather, extended forecasts, and video. There's a tab for severe weather advisories and an e-mail function to send a weather notice to a friend in your address book.
The Weather Channel is making much ado about a feature in the Explore Map tab that lets you add "map layers" and neighborhood points, essentially a combination of radar and clouds, the UV index, and rainfall watches that show up on the map alongside personal points of interest.
The weird yellow glow is a temperature map, with a highlight over a local airport.
(Credit: CNET)The idea is to dot your iPhone's map with as much detailed data as you need so you can track specific weather conditions at the airport, park, golf course, and so on--but only one map layer and neighborhood point at a time. It's a toss-up if that restriction is for the best--when zoomed in, the map crowds quickly.
Videos for local and international daily forecasts are a smart addition, and something that really sets this app apart. The Video tab will play the local forecast for the current location that The Weather Channel Interactive picked out using GPS, or for other favorites you saved. More videos by region and country are tucked into the More menu, though they're limited to the US, UK, France, Canada, the Bahamas, and the Caribbean.
While there's a lot of good information in here, the weather home screen that most people will check in with most often is blanketed with a dull blue that's very blah compared to the iPhone's native weather widget that's designed by Yahoo, but which grabs data from The Weather Channel. However, the biggest problem facing the Weather Channel's proprietary application, is stability. The app crashed on me four times during testing in an area with moderate signal.
Otherwise, this app is a good start for The Weather Channel, and one that brings tangible value with its video and e-mail extras.
When it comes to your weather-knowing needs, The Weather Channel Desktop 6, which moved out of beta this past week, contains a wealth of meteorological and atmospheric information that goes far beyond three-day forecasts. Of course, it does that, too. The app can predict weather for as short a period as the next 12 hours or as extended a span as the next 12 days. There's a storm watch and pollen count for your physical well-being and reports on cloud behavior over local golf courses, lakes, and amusement parks to help plan your day.
The Weather Channel Desktop, with Giants skin.
(Credit: CNET Networks)The Weather Channel Desktop also edges the competition, notably WeatherBug, in map quality, the former having switched to dynamic maps provided by Microsoft Virtual Earth that are complete with undulating cloud patterns in various levels of transparency.
When it comes to sheer appearance, I much prefer WeatherBug's glossier package to The Weather Channel Desktop's spare design. That may not matter a bit for sports fans, though. With The Weather Channel Desktop, they score a choice of Major League Baseball skins that tack on a score ticker, team stats, and the real-time climate at the game.
But apart from the map dynamics and a variations on the extra features (WeatherBug's UV count, for instance,) WeatherBug and The Weather Channel Desktop are neck-in-neck, down to the annoying bundled toolbars and blaring ad units. For about $30 a year, The Weather Channel will nix those ads, and also throw in five location profiles to the free version's two, plus provide a larger weather map with more animation details. That's a decent deal for amateur climatologists, but average folks will extract what they need from the free desktop version or a quick trip online.
Great weather info? Check. Obnoxious ads? Double-check.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Two of the most useful online services have got to be maps and weather.
With this in mind, The Weather Channel Interactive is offering a new mapplet for Google Maps that lets people add customizable weather layers to maps and see weather data on Google Earth (download it for Windows or Mac OS X).
One click and you can see the clouds over San Francisco on Google Maps. Pop-up bubbles provide more detailed information like current conditions including temperature, humidity, wind speed and UV Index. You can also find links to forecasts and track storms.
The weather information combines data from Doppler radar, satellite, lightning strike detection, computer models and climate profiles.
The weather mapplet is in the Featured Content section in the My Maps utility on Google Maps, while the data is in a weather layer on Google Earth.
Google Maps now shows weather data compliments of The Weather Channel Interactive.
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As of today, Google Earth can finally tell you what the weather is like while you zoom around the 3D representation of our planet. The app has a new layer that lets you toggle cloud cover, Doppler radar, and conditions and forecasts, which will show you what's on tap in each region using information aggregated from Weather.com. There's also an "information" link that has more background about each of the services and links to download the 6- and 24-hour cloud animations, which can be controlled using playback buttons in the top right of your screen. It looks just like you've seen on any TV weather report, except you have complete control on the playback slider, and can drag is backward and forward ad nauseum to bend the clouds to your will (it's great fun).
I couldn't manage to get the "conditions and forecasts" sublayer to activate with the latest build for Windows, but maybe that's just me. Everything else works marvelously, including the Doppler radar that Google claims is "near real-time," which is a reasonable considering it's updated every 15 minutes--about what you'd find at most weather sites. The data for Doppler comes from Weather.com and is limited to the contiguous United States, with plans to roll it out to Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Europe "shortly." All other regions of the globe are limited to cloud cover and forecasts, which Google pins at somewhere around 50,000 cities worldwide.
... Read moreGoogle Maps has worked hard to place just about every capability you'd want when you stare at a map into its Web app. That includes the ability for third-party developers to ornament Google's maps with their own KML, or keyhole markup language, mapplets.
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AccuWeather.com announced today its Forecast Snapshot for Google Maps. The add-on slips into the MyMaps tab of a user account and offers multiple ways to fetch the weather forecast while fixating on a particular locale.
Click the map, or enter the ZIP code or city into the AccuWeather.com search bar to grab meteorological data in Celsius or Fahrenheit. AccuWeather.com displays a three-day forecast in the sidebar and on the map face, but the widgetlike qualities stop there. Clicking for compressed or extended forecasts, animated radar, or anything else opens new tabs on AccuWeather.com.... Read more
WeatherBug knows how to get around. The detailed weather reporting application for most combinations of desktop and mobile downloads, plus a WAP site, has let iPhone into the club. Now iPhone users can check out seven-day forecasts, animated radar maps, and real-time images from street-level weather cameras.
Incidentally, I learned an interesting factoid about WeatherBug. It began as educational curriculum and still has a strong program for schools and organizations subscribing to its weather warning alert system (e.g., "chance of lightning, soccer canceled.") That explains why the view of Sunnyvale, Calif., is taken from what looks like the roof of the South Peninsula Hebrew Day School, a small private school, rather than this well-known landmark.
