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.
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.
Sony's PlayStation 3 got a small update early Thursday morning that added a new channel called Life with PlayStation. It merges news feeds, weather forecasts, and live Web cams on a giant world map.
It's an evolution on the Folding@Home application, the protein-folding scientific project that's gotten a hefty processing boost from worldwide PlayStation 3 owners who run the small application when not using their systems to play games or watch movies.
What makes the service neat is that it figures out where you are and automatically jumps to that point when you start it up. The news feeds are pulled in from Google News, while the weather reports are served up in real time via the Weather Channel. As you move around the globe, both the news and weather changes by city, and both are continuously updated throughout the day.
A similar offering was provided by Nintendo for its Wii system back in January of 2007 with both its News and Forecast channels, however in the U.S. the stories were limited to those from the Associated Press, unlike Sony's offering which pulls them in from all over the Web.
Noam Rimon, Sony Entertainment of America's senior development manager of R&D, provides a walk through the updated service in the video below.
Tomorrow the Weather Channel is officially launching a new Interactive Local Maps service. If you live in a city where the weather tends to vary by several degrees while just a short distance away, this new tool lets you to scope out the lay of the land--literally. The tool uses The Weather Channel's HiRAD (High Resolution Aggregated Data) technology which pulls in its weather information from several different integrated tracking services.
Like any other mapping tool, you can search for a specific location or just browse around. You can also turn on and off various layers, similar to Google Earth, to pick what kind of attractions you're looking for (parks, schools, landmarks), along with the type of weather overlay you want to see, like radar or cloud cover. Any items that pique your interest can be clicked for further information including the daily outlook and "fitness forecast" to gauge how the weather will impact your workout.
The tool currently works only in North America, although international users can toggle things like the cloud cover.
In my testing I didn't find a great deal of variation from point to point. The biggest differences happen around mountains and bodies of water, with some of the oceanside parks and recreation areas exhibiting fairly noticeable differences from those just a little inland. This will likely be the new favorite tool for people who are concerned about these minute differences from place to place, and to get a more precise outlook for smaller parts of a region. Anyone else is likely just as good sticking with the basic local forecast.
Related: Intellicast: Weather made pretty
Check out the forecast for a park or landmark, not just an entire city using the Weather Channel's new localized mapping tool.
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