Weather

We get a lot of weather, and many of "us" smartphone/PDA users seem to want a weather app on our devices. To be honest I'm not sure why as 99.9% of these people have data plans and access to the web where there's a myriad of weather related sites forecasting just about anything you want.

However, despite this we like to see that little weather app icon on our devices. I've been using Weather by Deluxeware for some time on my Palm Centro. It's been in beta, which for non techies means either/or/and:

• they've been developing it and some bits of functionality are missing
• you can't necessarily trust it to work properly
• don't blame us if it goes wrong

Graphically it's really nice to look at, simple to operate and gives current, 48, 7 day and 14 day status/forecasts. Deluxware's own description says:

Make your own weather station at Palm now! Current condition for the entire world (and for specific regions) updates every 15 minutes. Forecast information updates every 6 hours. Before making travel plans for a hotel or flight, it can be useful to check the weather for where you want to go. The auto update mode helps to keep the weather data timely. "Weather-guard" will improve Palm's standard KeyGuard and give the access to the current condition or 7-day forecast in an easy way.

Specifically, the feature list is:

• Fun images (clouds, sun, rain, snow) and indications of the general status
• Custom backgrounds with JPEG-support(non-progressive)
• High and low day temperature in Celsius or Fahrenheit
• Wind direction and speed in mph, km/h
• Dew point, Visibility, Humidity
• Current local time for cities
• The sun’s ultraviolet intensity level (UV index)
• Integrated weather to the Keyguard
• Keyguard's weather supports all Palm devices
• Hi-res+ devices Portrait and Landscape modes
• Current forecast automatic update
• Date/Time format settings
• Real feel temperature
• 5-way navigator
• Easy to use
• 7 days forecast
• Detailed view for each day of forecast
• 48-hours forecast
• 14 days forecast
• Skins for "Weather-guard"
• "Advanced scheduler" for auto-update
• Proxy-server settings
• Update all cities weather per session
• Photobank of exclusive backgrounds at "Web folder"
• Customized Hot-Keys feature
• Background images do navigation by folders
• Download backgrounds from "Web folder"
• Category "Best" for mostly downloaded backgrounds from "Web folder"

It's now out of beta, which means a) it's stable enough for general release (though I never had any problems with any of the beat versions) and b) you now have to pay a registration fee to access weather data. Costs aren't stupendous. It's $4.95 USD for a 3 month sub. $14.95 for a year or $19.95 for an infinite sub. I have to say I like this little app, and can heartily re4commend it if you're a weather buff. It'll prettyy much run on any Palm device running Palm OS 5.x.

Sadly, unless I'm mistaken there doesn't appear to be a trial version now it's out of beta, but I could be wrong.