Over the last two weeks, three companies launched three updates to their most popular apps. Yahoo!’s weather service is now available as a standalone app for the iPhone, Yahoo! Weather. Twitter launched Twitter music, a cool way to discover new music, artists, and let the world know that you’re a fan. Last, Pocket launched its ‘Send to Friend’ service.
Yahoo! Weather
Earlier a service on its website, Yahoo! Weather is now available as a standalone app for the iPhone for free. It has been made aesthetically appealing by using location-specific images from Flickr. More specifically, Yahoo! created a group on the photo-sharing service called “Project Weather”, where users are encouraged to submit pictures of the city or town they’re in, from around the world.
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When a person using Yahoo! Weather opens the app on a sunny day in, say, Maui, a photograph of Maui submitted to “Project Weather” on Flickr will accompany the climactic details of the day shown on your phone.
Also, if you’re using your phone on the landscape mode, photos are displayed without any accompanying information except the name of the photographer, so you can flip through his or her pictures like postcards. This makes Yahoo! Weather a great place for your pictures to be featured, too.
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Twitter’s new iOS app for Twitter Music is a powerful way to discover new music. Available for free, it uses its wide network of opinionated users to connect you to popular music and emerging artists.
The user interface is really beautiful and intuitive. After a brief walkthrough once you install the app (which you can view again under the settings), you’re taken to a page to listen to the most popular tracks, judged by the number of people tweeting about the tracks or lines from it. In fact, under #NowPlaying, you can snoop in on tracks that your friends have tweeted about.
You can listen to short snippets to draw your own conclusion, but if you like a track, then the app’s integration with Spotify and Rdio lets you stream the song and listen to it right there. You can also let Twitter take a look at your profile (requires you to sign in) and suggest new music for you.
Pocket - updated
Pocket is a handy app available for iOS and Android devices, and as an extension on the Chrome browser. Once you’ve installed it (at no cost), it lets you quickly save interesting articles on the web you come across, to be read later. The articles are stored in the app, and can be read offline, too.
The service added two new features recently. One is emailing, where you can email the link to an article to add@getpocket.com. The mail is automatically sent to your Pocket account, which you use to sign in to Pocket.
Their other new feature, ‘Send to Friend’, lets you share articles you think a friend would like to read via Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Buffer or email. Simply select the friend on one of these networks, and he or she will get access to the article, too, in the process expanding the social dimension that comes with your reading list.
Both these features were added by Pocket as part of their one-year anniversary.