Local app developers buUuk updated their WeatherLah app to include CrowdCast – their way of crowd sourcing the latest weather forecast. Basically we just go to the CrowdCast tab, and choose whether it is raining or not. Simple. Get enough input and you have a fair idea of the actual weather condition at that part of the island.

This is definitely much more accurate than any weather gauge. Only thing is people must actively run the app to do that. So if you want to know the weather, and want to contribute – just do a CrowdCast every time it rains with your WeatherLah app! For all you know, the next time you step out of your house, you won’t be come wet … lah!

Besides CrowdCast, WeatherLah allows you to set rain warning alerts at towns which you can select, and if you don’t mind some background location work, you can even configure it to notify you if the area you had just moved is going to rain. Nifty especially whenever monsoon strikes. There is also an alert for PSI which will be useful whenever our southern neighbour decides to burn their forest. Lastly there is also a twitter tab that shows tweets from @NEAsg and @weatherlah for some twitter weather alerts.

I have seen many weather apps in the App Store and many are decked out with such detailed meteorological information like wind direction, humility blah blah blah. All I need to know is whether the place I am going is raining, or not. And that’s where WeatherLah hits the spot. It is well designed and tells you the weather as it is. Add in CrowdCast – we have a winner!

update 2 version 1.2.1 which was released today seems to fix the bugs below.

update The current version (v 1.2) seems to have some problems:

• at the Alert Settings tab, I wasn’t able to save the setting to switch on Heavy Rain alert and Quiet Time
• a bigger probem seems to be that the Background Location checking of weather status can’t be switch off once you switch it on, even if you “force quit” the app. The only way you can switch the Background Location feature off is when you delete the app. So if you do have the app, I suggest NOT to toggle the option to run Background Location check till they fix this
• One other possible bug is if you are listening to music with the iPod app, when you switch to WeatherLah, it stops the music. No reason why it should.

Have informed the BuUuk guys about these and I will update when I hear more from the developers.

Read more about how they came about this simple but clever idea of CrowdCasting our weather at Navjot Pawera’s blog

• download WeatherLah for free from iTunes

Here are some screen shots to see what a nicely created app this is.

Place an iPhone in a child’s hands, and chances are that nine out of ten will figure out how it works almost immediately. Having suitable apps that will keep their attention will definitely come in useful for parents, sort of like an electronic-pacifier. To have that app educate and at the same time entertain the child will be a bonus!

The good folks at SkyVu Pictures have come up with the perfect solution: the Storyboy – a series of interactive storybook apps that combine interesting short stories with colorful animation and engaging narration. They have currently more than 20 book apps available in the App Stores that appeal to kids from ages 1 to 7. They also started on iPad development.

Read more →

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference this year will be held from June 7 to 11 at San Francisco’s Moscone West. As the image above shows, the focus will be on iPhone OS 4 and iPhone apps development. With iPad already out in the market, this WWDC will have its first iPad development sessions and hands-on working labs for iPhone® OS 4, as well as Mac OS® X core technology labs.

As mentioned by John Gruber – the focus will be on the iPhone OS, less on the Mac:

The focus is heavily iPhone OS centric. There are some Mac OS X developer sessions and labs, but not many. (Translation: Mac OS X 10.7 is not going to be announced this year.) The IT track appears to be gone. Looking at the session list, one could argue that this year’s WWDC is an iPhone OS developers conference, not an Apple developers conference. Look no further than this year’s Apple Design Awards, which will only honor iPhone and iPad apps — no category for Mac apps.

With the background of the legal wranglings over the stolen-iPhone going on, the possibility of the announcement of the new iPhone is unclear as there wasn’t an announcement of the expected keynote address by Steve Jobs, but we can still hope. Let us know if you’re going!

Bringing copying to a new low level.

Brought to our attention by a reader, we bring you Classics: Jane Austen by Diego Dominguez Ferrera of Ubiklabs. The application is a collection of ebooks by Jane Austen bundled together in a $2.99 package. Look familiar? It should, as the visual styling is very similar to Classics as seen in these two screenshots …

Read more at The Infinity Loop

It’s a slow news day (weekend for the US folks) for Apple fans when almost every news site wrote on Apple-founder Steve Wozniak appearing on American reality game show Dancing with the Stars.

Though we don’t get to see the show here in Singapore, its interesting to see how Woz performs as he carries the torch of geekdom against the rest of the has-beens (ok, not including Jewel and Denise Richards).

More importantly, is he doing the dance on his Segway?

Valentine’s Day apps hits the App Store

Like Christmas and farts, iPhone developers are quick to produce apps for lovebirds to purchase and download specially for Valentines’ Day. Do a quick search and you will find fanciful named apps with almost zero usefulness.

For example Lovetricity (iTunes Link which aims to determine the level of chemistry by placing you and your love one’s thumb on the screen. Or iLuv Bubbles (iTunes Link which makes bubbles appearing on your iPhone screen turns RED and becomes heart shape when you and your lover touch the screen long enough. Or for the cheapskates, you can always send a photo of yourself carrying a bouquet of flowers (with massive 26 choices!) and email it to your love ones with Send-a-Bouquet (Valentines Edition!) (iTunes Link).

Seriously – which would you think will get you a real date? Buying a real bouquet of flowers or using Send-A-Bouquet?

Let me choose what to Flash

That is the premise of this Webkit-plugin clicktoFlash that was developed to let Safari users control when to load and play Flash contents on the web. After you installed the plugin (make sure you scroll down to where it says Download ClickToFlash 1.x here to download the installer and not the source files), whenever Safari encounters any Flash content, a grey box with the word Flash appears which you can choose to click to load and play, or right click to open a contextual menu that allows you to add the site to a whitelist or edit the whitelist which will automatically allows the Flash to run in future.

With this in place, sites that have Flash content will load faster, including those pesky Flash ad banners that are popping out everywhere. Note that as this is a webkit-plugin, ClickToFlash will also work for apps like NetNewsWire that uses webkit to render the RSS feeds.

Though small in number, the iPhone app developers here in Singapore are releasing a good number of applications that are of quality and useful for Singaporeans. Some apps developed here are also of global appeal.

Here are a few that were updated and/or released in the past week.

TubeJunkies – App for subscribing and viewing Youtube videos

TubeJunkies is a special RSS reader to make it easier for YouTube fans to keep track of their favourite videos in YouTube. Users can subscribe to video channels based on search text, youtube users, or video tags, and never miss any new videos uploaded.

TubeJunkies is another app from local developer Muh Hon Cheng who also did SG Buses, SG Trains and SG ERP.

Some of the features includes subscribing to video channels based on search texts, Youtube usernames and tags, marking viewed or not for the subscribed channels, just like a typical RSS reader. Do read more about the app here

Note that viewing of the Youtube videos is via streaming over WIFI or 3G/Edge. The app is available now in the App Store at US$5.99. A more detailed review of the TubeJunkies after I try it out.

BuUuk 2.1 released

Ask any Singaporeans what they do more than sleeping, the answer will probably be eating. Its surprisingly that we are not up there with the most obese nations. Furthermore we are quite discerning when it comes to food – people follows TV programs that showcase popular food stores religiously. That’s where BuUuk comes in (how do you pronounce that?)

The app contains listing of over 4,000 food and drink locations in Singapore and allows you to search nearby places (location-aware) for your next meal or drink. Easy to use ranking and reviews feature by users of the app gives you a quick overview before even stepping into the place.

A big plus of the app is the Offers section that they work with outlets to provide discounts when you flash your iPhone with the coupon. However, a downer for iPod Touch users is that if you are not connected via WIFI at the joint, you can’t get the coupon as the app will not work. The use-cache-if-no-network seems to fail for me as the app will auto-shutdown.

For social-networking loving people, you can link BuUuk to connect to your Twitter account and it will crosspost whenever you rate a place or drop a quick review. It also allows you to snap and share photos of the food or place. Lastly, with the 2.1 update, you can also keep bookmarks of the places you found in BuUuk, which is a god-send for forgetful people like me.

One thing this app will need is more Singaporeans to rate the eating place for the database to make any sense. So why wait? Next time you have a meal or a drink, just pop BuUuk and make a quick review. Best of all, BuUuk is available for FREE at the App Store.

The Straits Times – local broadsheet comes to the iPhone

The Straits Times is Singapore’s main English paper in circulation and its no surprise to see it popping up in the App Store (though much slower than Today)

As a mobile news reader, its interface is clean, easy and fast to navigate around the various sections and individual story of the paper. Turn your iPhone horizontally, and it automatically switches to a bigger font, making it easier to read. You can also bookmark individual news article for further reading.

Functions aside, I have a little bone to pick. The use of the serif font (Times Roman?) for the display of news articles, makes it looks just a bit old fashion, somewhat 1980s. Maybe its me, but comparatively, the use of Georgia for the New York Times app makes the news article looks better.

Another thing I didn’t like was the ad bar at the bottom of the page, which took up almost 20% of the screen space, which is by itself already quite limited. What’s worse is they are currently linked to ST’s own static one page ad, Razor TV’s static ad and lastly, an almost non-functional STOMP page. face palm

Thankfully, the fast download makes it useful for a quick sync-and-dash to read while you are offline. All-in-all, a pretty good first attempt for fuss-free reading of the latest news and reports from the local broadsheet. Grab it at the “App Store”: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=301065357&mt=8 now.

SGBlood – Give Blood and Give Life (:

So say this new app from Junda Ong – he who gave us the must-have SG Toto and SG 4D.

Its main objective is to motivate you to go out and donate blood to the blood bank. It has a calendar listing all upcoming Bloodmobile locations, a calculator to show you when you can next donate blood, contacts for blood donation centres in Singapore and also a simple FAQ about blood donation.

I like its simplicity and its message of this app. Blood is precious and there is always a need for blood donation in Singapore for whatever emergencies. One thing I hope to see improved is the Show Map feature. It loads up a Google Map page which made the real estate for the map reduced to just 60% of the available space. It should load just the map without the Google Map interface, with the pin on the exact location if possible.

Another suggestion that will improve the app is if possible, there should also be a Add-To-iCal button on each event detail page so that one can add that to our schedule.

So do support our local developers to do more and better quality apps and maybe one will strike gold.