Yahoo rolls out Flickr-driven Weather app and new iPad mail app
Remember Yahoo? The company's attempt at a return to relevance is in full gear, with the introduction of two new free mobile apps -- Yahoo! Weather and a tablet version of Yahoo! Mail.
If Burt Bacharach was still writing songs, he probably wouldn't write "What the world needs now is weather apps, sweet weather apps." After all, a day doesn't go by where yet another weather app is unleashed on the planet. But I have to admit, Yahoo did an incredible job with this app.
Launching Yahoo! Weather for the first time, the app determines where you are and then pulls a Flickr image appropriate for the location and weather to be displayed on the screen. Those images change with changes in the weather, so you'll usually know at a glance what's going on in the great outdoors.
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Swiping vertically in the app unveils a variety of detailed weather information, while swiping horizontally displays weather in other user-selected locations. Tapping on the map in the app, users can see satellite cloud images, a temperature map, a wind velocity map or a radar map for any of the locations. I'm not sure why, but all of the the maps with the exception of the radar imagery loaded very slowly for me. Still, the app provides a lot of weather information in a very attractive and immediately useful manner, and I can see Yahoo! Weather replacing several of the other weather apps on my iPhone.
Yahoo! Mail now runs on either the iPad or iPad mini, with a full-screen reading mode for emails with embedded photos, newsletters or shared articles. The app also provides support for more languages and has advanced options for message actions. If you feel like browsing your inbox book-style, you can go to a full screen viewing mode and flick through your messages with a swipe.
