AccuWeather, Inc.

by There’s a lot of excitement on the East Coast this week. In addition to Tuesday’s earthquake, Hurricane Irene will likely make an appearance this weekend in the Carolinas and possibly elsewhere. As I write this, Hurricane Irene is wreaking havoc on the north coast of the Dominican Republic, but who knows where it will go? The National Weather Service reported Tuesday morning that the storm is moving northwest at 10 mph. By Thursday, it’s expected to strengthen into a Category 3 storm. Predicting the path of a hurricane is notoriously difficult work. Since things can change quickly, you can, in effect, become your own meteorologist by using many of the same tools the pros use. In this day and age, there are a wealth of online tools that can help you track the hurricane. If you’re one of the millions of people in the path of Hurricane Irene, you might want to avail yourself of the following resources. 1 of 12 If you want the official word on what's going on, check in to the National Weather Service's site. Though there are sites with better graphics, the NWS is a good all-around resource for all things weather-related, including oil spills and even space weather. 1 NOAA nowCOAST lets you make a customized, real-time map using NOAA data. If you're interested in variables like the sea surface temperature and precipitation estimates, this site may be for you, but for others, this may be TMI. 2 A great resource from MyFoxTampaBay and the FOX Network, MyFoxHurricane has tons of pictures and an obsessively updated blog. 3 The Weather Channel has all the stuff that the other sites have along with lots of video, of course. 4 AccuWeather has forecasts and lots of news, with just about every angle into the hurricane you can think of. 5 Ibiseye is a big map with information about the storm's track and intensity. A graphical synopsis of the storm’s winds, pressure and wind field is also available. 6 The Weather Underground has the usual features of the other sites plus the site’s trademarked “Wundermap,” on which you can choose layers of information to display. 7 Stormpulse integrates information from the National Hurricane Center to give you a real-time map of the storm's progress. 8 Are you curious about what the hurricane looks like from outer space? Check out the latest satellite pictures direct from NASA’s Earth Read More

Posted 05/13/2011 at 10:00am | by Florence Ion Don't know what it's like outside? Too lazy to open up the curtains and take a peek? Use your Mac or iOS devices to check and see what the weather is like. Here's a quick look at five free weather apps that let you know whether today's the day to leave the jacket at home. A free weather app that relies on crowd-sourced data to let you know what it's like outside. Lately, this is one of our favorite apps because it really gives you a detailed look at what the weather is like in your particular neighborhood or area. While it's actually the "Lite" version of another Weather application, Weather+ is nice because it gives you current weather conditions and a 5-day forecast worldwide, as well as videos and widgets, all beautifully visualized on your iPad. It's not actually a weather application, but it'll display the the weather and temperature outside in a widget-like interface. Perfect if you're the type who docks your iOS device by your bed at night. WunderMap lets you scroll around a fully interactive map to check out temperatures in your region.. And, there are animated clouds, which makes it great for tracking storms (so you can avoid them, of course). Get detailed current conditions, a 15-day forecast and hourly weather updates with the AccuWeather forecast. Plus, there are weather alarms to warn you of severe weather (because you needed more to be paranoid about in life). Tags: Read More

There was a time when taking an electronic device with you on an adventure holiday would have been seen as sacrilege, as how would it be an adventure if you had that level of assistance?  Thankfully, we think things have changed, and your smartphone is seen as not only an essential safety tool, but something which can enhance your adventure too! If you’re planning an adventure this year, here are ten hints and tips about what to equip your iPhone with before you go. 1.  A Really Tough Case. If you’re going to be using your iPhone 4 in harsh environments, it’s going to need to be well protected.  There are several super-tough cases available for the iPhone, and we’ve previously reviewed the Ballistic HC for the iPhone 4 and the Otterbox for the 3G, and both are seriously hard wearing, sealed units able to withstand proper shocks. 2.  An Extended Battery. There’s every chance you won’t always have access to a power socket on your adventure holiday, so make sure you pack an extended battery pack for your iPhone 4.  While something like the MiLi Power Pack 4 provides plenty of extra power, space could well be tight and carrying something like this may not be an option.  In which case, we’d recommend the Mophie Juice Pack Reserve, as it’s small enough to not to be noticed, but will still give more than enough power for emergencies. Track and share your adventure with EveryTrail.  The GPS tracks your movements and shows points of interest, you can share pictures, information and video with other travelers plus download maps for offline use.  In-app purchases may be required.  Free. A very attractive journal app so you can record your adventure, saving everything from text notes, pictures, video and even audio clips to enjoy again in the future.  $0.99/£0.59. 5.  A GPS App. There are so many to choose from, this is going to depend on where your adventure is going to take place more than anything else.  If you’re hiking in the US, then AccuTerra comes highly recommended, but if you’re wanting something more road-based then check out TomTom, or MotionX if you’re on a tight budget. 6.  A Weather App. There are plenty of weather apps available inside the App Store, and it’s likely you have a personal favorite already.  We’re partial to AccuWeather, but others may prefer The Weather Channel.  If Read More

Seguro que os habéis dado cuenta de que en la vida hay conversaciones típicas y una de ellas sin duda alguna es la del tiempo. Cada maestrillo tiene su librillo y cada cuál cree consultar el tiempo en el sitio “que no falla”. Uno dice por ejemplo: “Mañana va a llover a partir de las 6 de la tarde… lo he visto en Accuweather que no falla.” Y otro contesta: “Qué va… la previsión de la Uno es la que no falla y dice que no llueve”. Al final resulta que nieva y todos se equivocan. Todos tenemos un sitio predilecto donde mirar el tiempo y teniendo en cuenta esto, nos gustaría que nos dijérais cuál es vuestra aplicación preferida para saber qué tiempo hará. Yo os voy a decir cuales son las que tengo instaladas en el iPhone y que, particularmente, van bastante bien. En la App Store hay muchísimas más, así que vosotros habláis… ¿En cuál confiáis más? Read More

By Rene Ritchie, Saturday, Nov 6, 2010 | ‘Tis the season to be gifting and with iPhone and iPad being pretty much the perfect travel companions, there will be lots of vacationers to shop for this year. That means not only devices like iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad all wrapped up and ready to go, but all the great apps and accessories that go with them. Do you know someone special who’ll be traveling over the holidays? If so, here’s TiPb helpful holiday gift guide! Don’t need anything for a traveler? Check out the recommendations anyway, something great might still catch your eye. If not, no worries, we’ll have plenty more holiday gifts guides coming your way this month! iPhones and iPads are great… dropping them in the sand or surf really, truly isn’t. That’s why we never go near the beach or poolside without a waterproof case. Both the Overboard and the Aquapac have a lot to recommend them. Aquapac’s design makes it a little easier to see through but Overboard has just turned it up a notch with a new model complete with waterproof headphones. Hot tub. Ready. If we’re not so much swimming as hiking, we want something a little more secure and for that we like the Golla Bag. Tons of styles, tons more functionality. Nothing harshens our vacation mellow more than overcast skies and rainy days, so we use Weather Channel Max or AccuWeather.com to keep as up-to-date and informed as possible about the climate. Both are US-centric, however, so if you’re traveling outside the states, the quality and quantity of information declines. If there’s a golf course nearby, V1 Golf or Golfplan with Paul Azinger can help tune our swings either before travel or between hitting the links. Need a few good books to get us through a hard day’s lounging? We like iTunes or Amazon gift certificates so we can download iTunes movies, TV shows, and iBooks or Amazon Kindle books. iBooks is frankly the better reading experience but Kindle has a much bigger library and works on a wide range of devices, so it comes down style vs. quantity and compatibility. When we’re heading home for the holidays, and that means snow and pine trees, we keep the same waterproof cases we mentioned above handy in case our iPhone or iPad takes a tumble in the snow. And since we don’t want our Read More

Hurricane Earl is expected to wreak some havoc on the East Coast this Labor Day weekend. According to the the National Hurricane Center, Earl is expected “pass near the North Carolina outer banks tonight [Thursday]… and approach southeastern New England Friday night.” President Obama has declared a state of emergency for North Carolina, and FEMA has deployed teams to North Carolina, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine. Whether you live near the National Hurricane Center’s official “Forecast Cone” or you’re one of the 34.4 million people who planned a trip for this weekend, you’ll want to keep an eye on Earl. Here are some resources to kickstart your tracking: Get your weather warnings and advisories right from the source on top of a color-coded map. You can also use the site to check in on where Earl is likely to hit and whether or not hurricane force winds are probable in your area. Make a customized, real-time map using NOAA data. Decide what location, information, and time you’d like to view and what data layers you’d like to activate, and nowCOAST will make a map for your request. This is a great tool for people who actually know something about weather, but it can leave the beginner hurricane tracker a bit confused. See what the hurricane looks like from outer space by taking a look at the latest satellite pictures direct from NASA’s Earth Science Office. The site offers a number of different satellite views, include infrared and water vapor readings. Very helpful for connecting with other hurricane tracking nerds, this dedicated hurricane website from MyFoxTampaBay and the FOX Network hosts a live chat in addition to its other hurricane resources. Interesting maps include the hurricane’s predicted path map, the wave height near the storm and a radar map that zooms in on the Outer Banks. The Weather Channel’s Hurricane Central allows you to view where Hurricane Earl has been and where it’s projected to go. There are also separate maps for hurricane advisories, tropical storm advisories, wind speeds and wave heights; the site also has satellite maps for specific regions. The maps aren’t as flashy as some of the other sites on this list, but they are very easy to read and understand. If you want to see what Hurricane Earl looks like – and we’re not talking radar – watch this footage taken from directly above Read More

By Staff, Thursday, Jun 3, 2010 | How does a self-employed, creative carpenter use his iPhone to get the job done and what iPhone apps help get him through her day? TiPb’s iPhone at work contest aims to bring you just such slices of the iPhone life. Here’s Farmdread’s answer and as a small token of thanks we’re sending him a $20 iTunes gift certificate. If you want to see your name up on the TiPb home page and get a gift certificate all your own, head on over to the TiPb iPhone Forum and share your story now! I’m a self-employed general contractor specializing in creative carpentry (oh, and I also build giant puppets.) Here’s my story: My work day starts when I get up, and that starts with my iPhone. The Clock alarm is set to a peaceful tone that doesn’t annoy my wife (she got sick of “marimba” real quick so currently it’s set to “strum.” We’ll see how long that lasts.) From here I check TiPb and my Mail in bed as I wake up. Hopefully there aren’t any emails from a client that said that their house burned down last night due to something I did. I would expect that in a text, not an email. As I make my morning elixir – coffee – I check my Calendar to see what is on my schedule. Ah, today I am building a fence out of old reclaimed doors and windows. I jump in my dilapidated truck (needed a new truck, got an iPad instead), record my starting miles using and find my route using Google Maps. On the way I plug in my iTrip to listen to (I swear, I don’t have a Michael Buble channel) while using my bluetooth headset to call the lumber store to order the framing materials. When I get to the lumber store, I realize that the coffee hasn’t totally kicked in (did I even remember to put the espresso in my mocha?) and I need to use and Calculator to figure out how many 4×4’s and 2×4’s I need. Simple math but it’s just too early to strain my brain. As I get set up at the job site, I plug my iPhone into my Ridgid job site radio which conveniently has a 30-pin dock for Apple products. More Pandora ensues (what can I say, Buble is my muse) as Read More

EnvIO Networks has just released the latest batch of usage statistics from its iPhone app Chorus. The app, which launched in November, acts as a social network for Apple's App Store. It lets users share what apps they're buying, as well as recommend purchases to others--two things Apple's own store does not offer. According to the company, Chorus users have invited an average of 75 friends. The numbers below are based on "tens of thousands of user interactions and download attempts" from the month of December. Note: All links open up in iTunes Top 10 Most Recommended Apps Among Chorus Community December 2009: Top 10 Free Apps for December 2009 based on buy attempts: Top 10 Paid Apps for December 2009 based on buy attempts: The one big takeaway here is that Chorus crowd is more work-focused compared with what tends to make it to the top of Apple's own top paid and free lists. The only games in all three lists are DropZap, Santa's Run, Garters & Ghouls, Pig Rush, and iBALLS:STEEL--all five of which are in the top paid apps list. The rest are all utilities. As mentioned in our initial coverage of Chorus, envIO Networks eventually plans to roll out a Web-based version of Chorus that will let users view trending apps and recommendations from outside of the App Store. This could make a big impact on the number of people who are using the service, and how well it does at tracking purchases made through the desktop version of iTunes or from outgoing iTunes store links. Read More

Leena Rao currently works as a writer for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... → Learn More Chorus, the recently launched iPhone app that helps you discover other apps, is revealing the most recommended apps from their community. Developed by envIO Networks, Chorus is sort of like a mobile social network based around the apps that your friends have downloaded and lets you tap into your existing social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, to share with your friends. The app features real-time feeds from your designated friends (those who have also downloaded Chorus and whom you have friended) displaying the apps they are downloading, and what they are saying about them in the app. Chorus’ technology will match your favorite apps against those your friends use, building a personalized and relevant list of recommended apps. Chorus will also ask your a series of questions to determine the types of apps your like. And you can share your favorite apps through social networks such as Facebook and Twitter and also invite them to test out Chorus. envIO is now releasing the most popular and recommended paid and free apps in its community over the past month out of mote than 25,000 purchase and download attempts. Top 10 Most Recommended Apps Among Chorus Community: Top 10 Free Apps for November 2009 based on buy attempts: Top 10 Paid Apps for November 2009 based on buy attempts: Sponsored Ads Sponsored Ads Sponsored Ads Read More

Felicia is fading, but Bill is building. Forming early Monday, Hurricane Bill sustained winds of 90 mph which are expected to climb to 110 mph — putting it in the running to become a major hurricane in the next couple of days. The first official hurricane in the Atlantic this season, Bill is some 1000 miles east of the Lesser Antilles and is expected to track west-northwest as it builds. Residents of Bermuda should monitor its progress closely, and East Coast residents might be in for some choppy surf as a result as well. Luckily there are umpteen ways to follow the progress of the storm as it develops. We’ve rounded up some of our favorite hurricane-chasing resources here, broken into sections for web-based resources, Twitter-specific sources and mobile hurricane tracking. MyFoxHurricane has been a staple of our hurricane tracking resources for its tracking maps, video footage, satellite photos, and live chat with other site visitors. You can also get updates coming right to you from their Facebook page and Facebook app, as well as follow them on Twitter. It’s another old standby but we’d be remiss for not including Weather.com. You can get the latest news on specific storms, track them live and even upload video footage if you’re near an affected area and have something interesting to share. StormAdvisory is a nice and simple Google Maps mashup where you can pick a current storm to overlay and see its trajectory. The link provided is to the Atlantic map tracker for Hurricane Bill, but the site provides eastern and western Pacific maps as well. Another Google Maps based web app, Ibiseye lets you plot multiple storms, see various views of the data and get a display of relevant statistics including distance from the nearest cities for each path point. Intellicast offers current tracking and forecasts as well as visible and infrared satellite imagery, news, bulletins and alerts. They also have an iGoogle gadget available for start pages. The tropical weather/hurricane section of Weather Underground offers tracking maps, satellite images, public advisories, computer models and interactive Flash maps. As we noted for Hurricane Fay trackers, one of the nicest infoviz options here is the Wundermap Google Maps mashup. AccuWeather is worth mentioning again as well for being one of the few that actually make their own forecasts, whereas many other resources pull in government forecast data. Videos and weather analysis are Read More