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Daily Update for February 20, 2014
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get some the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the player at the top of the page. The Daily Update has been moved to a new podcast host in the past few days. Current listeners should delete the old podcast subscription and subscribe to the new feed in the iTunes Store here.
WunderMap: The weather app gets a "wunderful" update
It seems like it was only yesterday that I was writing about Weather Underground's iOS WunderMap app. Today, the company announced the availability of a new universal version of the free application, bringing the weather mapping capability to iPhone and iPod touch users as well. For many users of the app, that would be enough of an update to be worthy of celebration, but there's more that has been changed – in fact, in a day of testing before the app went live, I was frankly amazed with what Weather Underground has done with the app in about eight months. To begin with, the app now has a new, iOS 7-friendly design that is much easier to use and navigate. Radar and satellite imagery download much faster – I was impressed with how quickly I could load the animations that show how clouds and precipitation are moving into my area. One thing I've loved about Weather Underground as a weather website is the availability of webcam data, so you can actually do "eyes-on" verification of the weather conditions being reported. WunderMap now provides full-screen webcam imagery and –- when possible –- traffic-cam access. Last but not least, I was impressed with the new icon for the app. Rather than go with the typical boring iOS 7 flat icon, the WunderMap developers created a very descriptive and colorful icon that shows one of the PWS (Personal Weather Station) indicators that you're able to pull up on one of the map layers. Those layers –- the default map showing weather stations, radar, precipitation, temperature, infrared satellite, webcams, wind, US fronts, visible satellite, regional temperature, severe weather, hurricanes, active fires and fire risk –- can be viewed singly or layered on top of each other. Animations over time are available with a single tap on the lower right side of the app screen, and a legend showing what colors on a layer mean are also more easily visible now. The app is free to download, but you'll see ads when switching or otherwise editing layers. An in-app purchase is available to turn off the advertising for a year for US$1.99, and if you happen to be a contributor to Weather Underground by providing your Personal Weather Station data, ads are turned off by default. For weather geeks or those who are just curious about what's happening locally –- or around the world –- the WunderMap app is definitely one every iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch owner should install.
Daily Update for November 21, 2013
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
WunderMap provides worldwide weather maps for iOS devices
One of my all-time favorite weather sites is Weather Underground, which not only provides detailed weather maps for locations worldwide, but also has a large and growing community-sourced network of local weather stations and webcams. Today, Weather Underground is rolling out an updated version of WunderMap, a free universal iOS app that displays weather information for your current location on a detailed map. An in-app purchase (US$1.99) removes advertising for a year of pitch-free fun, and current Weather Underground members can log into the app with their credentials to remove the ads. I had a chance to beta test this version of WunderMap over the past few weeks and have found it to be a well-designed and stable weather app. After launching WunderMap, it determines your location and then displays a default street map with local temperatures listed on it. If you happen to be on a ship in the North Norwegian Sea, it picks up temperatures from local village weather stations and oil platforms. Local weather advisories are highlighted on the default map in colors. As we were sailing north along the Norwegian coast, an area with a gale warning was outlined in green, while another blue area denoted unusually large amounts of precipitation. As with most map apps, WunderMap can be zoomed in and out or panned using common gestures. Different types of maps are available; a default map with temperature, radar and severe-weather warnings, temperature, regional temperature, precipitation, wind, visible and infrared satellite imagery, webcams (images from Weather Underground station webcams), hurricanes, active fires and fire risk. As an example, the regional temperature map I just pulled up shows daily high temperatures for most of Europe, color coded to indicate cooler (blue) or warmer (red) temperatures. A pull-down at the top of the screen displays current and forecasted weather conditions at the nearest station, and a tap on any of the temperature readings displays a similar pop-up window for any other station. WunderMap is easy to navigate and chock-full of the information you want to know, especially when you're traveling. If you're a weather buff or just want a single weather app that can replace a handful of less capable apps, WunderMap is definitely a winner.
Weather Underground releases iPhone app
Weather Underground was the first online weather service, but until now it didn't have an iPhone-specific app. That will all change soon when the Weather Underground app arrives on the App Store. The developers of the app provided TUAW with a pre-release version of the software, which is expected to be approved by Apple shortly. We'll update this post with links to the application on the App Store as soon as it's available. The free app takes advantage of official weather stations as well as the huge network of over 23,000 personal weather stations around the world. What this means is that users have the ability to get current weather readings for much closer locations. For example, there are four National Weather Service stations in the Denver area, none of which are closer than about 8 miles from my office. The Weather Underground app provides a list of stations that are closer -- two of them are about a mile away. The Weather Underground's website displays weather information on an interactive weather map called WunderMap®. The iPhone app includes WunderMap and a number of overlays that can be toggled on or off, including animated radar, satellite, webcams, and severe weather updates. %Gallery-141844% Unlike a lot of the weather apps that I have installed on my iPhone, the Weather Underground app is very stable and didn't crash at all during my testing. It's also relatively fast compared to other weather apps. According to Weather Underground, the feature set of the app also includes: 7-day forecasts including text summary Hourly forecasts including sunrise and sunset Saved favorite locations and recent searches Twitter integration – share your weather with Twitter friends and follow the latest weather trends on the wunderground.com Twitter feed Snow and winter sports reports Leading weather commentary from Dr. Jeff Masters Tropical Weather and Hurricane Coverage National Weather Service radio Expect to see the app on the App Store in the next day or so.
First look: free WunderMap weather app for iPad
I've always been a bit of a sucker for the Weather Underground "Who Is Hot?" and Wunder Radio iPhone apps, as well as their website, so I was anxiously awaiting word of when they'd announce something for the iPad. I didn't have to wait long, as the company has announced that their free WunderMap has been approved by Apple and will be available soon. According to a company spokesman, they also submitted a version of WunderRadio for iPad that was rejected by Apple -- it ran on the iPad simulator, but not on the actual device. They've resubmitted, and we can only hope that that great radio app receives approval before Saturday. What is WunderMap? It's an amazing interactive weather map that uses Weather Underground's 16,000+ weather stations as well as radar and satellite layers to bring you weather information in a totally new way. You can start by looking at current conditions at any of the Weather Underground sites, with information including temperature, dew point, humidity, precipitation, wind speed, wind direction, and barometric pressure. Or course, most people want to know what the weather is going to be like in the future, so WunderMap provides 4-day forecasts for the center location in the current view of the map.
