Greetings! As the weather grabbing more and more headlines these days, this is the perfect time to announce the release of the all new PocketWeather v2 for iPhone and iPad!  PocketWeather v2 brings myriad of new stuff with it, among them you’ll find: iPad and iOS 4.2 support, multitasking and printing, faster and easier navigation, new sub-views including detailed weather and METAR information views, new detailed earthquake view, direct image sharing to Facebook, downloaded image export to Facebook, Dropbox, Email, Bump and iPhone Album and to top it all, we’ve also added the anticipated image animation support!

As with all of our updates, all PocketWeather Pro registered users (users who removed ads from PocketWeather) are entitled to upgrade to this new release for free – upgrade details included towards the bottom of this post. Read ahead to get the full details about this exciting new release and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

What’s new with PocketWeather V2

1. iPad Support, Summary View for iPad – iPad users  gain an additional overview page which combines both the Current Conditions view and Sun and Moon view, but also includes a large thermometer display and thumbnails of the location’s images.  Tapping on these image thumbnails automatically switches the view to the maps view, from which the user to pane, zoom, and lots more.

2. Summary View – The main view now supports left/right panning to quickly and easily change locations.

While the Sun and Moon view remains largely unchanged, the Current Conditions view has been updated to give an easier overview of the current weather conditions and today’s forecast.  To achieve this, the additional days forecasts have been removed.

In addition to the existing forecast table and graph views, the user can drill down from the Current Conditions view using the chevron on the bottom right to view additional daily forecast details, including hourly forecast, and online location information, including airport/flight and astronomical websites specific to that location.

Further current condition details is available by using the chevron in the top right to view detailed METAR information, including the raw METAR data, and links to the “Aviation Digital Data Service Website” (the source of the METAR data), and other online resources specific to that METAR station.

Double-tapping on any of the summary views will bring up an action menu, where the user has the option to save the curre

nt view to the iPhone’s album, EMail, save to DropBox, publish (with comments) to FaceBook, or print (subject to device support).

3. Maps Images – The images view under maps has been updated to include animation of the sequence of downloaded images.

Suitable images also benefit from weather icon overlays.

Pressing the Action button on the menu bar brings up the Action menu, where the user has the option to save the current view to the iPhone’s album, email, save to DropBox, publish (with comments) to FaceBook, or print (subject to being supported by device).

4. METAR Maps - The weather icon overlays, when pressed, will expose a chevron, which when pressed, will now bring up detailed information on the station or location.  From there, the user to drill down to see the raw METAR data, and advanced station information and external internet links.

5. Earthquake Maps – Pressing the event’s overlay chevron, or the bottom right chevron will now bring up the detailed earthquake event view, which shows details of the selected event, as well as zoomed in map view.  Buttons are provided to link directly to the USGS website, add a new location closest to the event, or post directly to FaceBook.

Sorting of the detailed events can be changed from latest to largest using the tabs at the top.

Panning left or right on the detailed pane iterates through all the events sorted either by date or by event size.

6. Units Settings – An additional units selection option has been added to quickly change to “US”, “UK”, “Metric”, or “Nautical” default unit configuration. Custom units can still be manually configured using the “Custom” option.

7. General Settings – A new “General” menu entry has been added which includes the ability to export/import the entire PocketWeather configuration to/from DropBox, and to send/receive configuration to/from another device using the Bump service.

When Import is selected in either DropBox or Bump, if a full configuration is selected, the existing configuration is wiped/erased, and the new configuration loaded. If the import is for a single specific location (see Location Export below), then the new location’s configuration is appended to the end of the list of existing locations.

There is also options to clear the weather and image caches, as well as a full reset of PocketWeather back to defaults configuration.

8. Location Menu – When the user presses “Edit” in the location selection menu, there is now an option to manually adjust each location’s configuration, including adding a custom name, time zone, and Latitude/Longitude. The “Auto-update” enable/disable allows for a location to be temporarily disabled – hidden from the normal PocketWeather views.

9. Location Images – The images associated with a  location can also be edited. New images can be added, either manually or automatically, and others deleted, or reordered.

The option to automatically add images will cause PocketWeather to search through its database of images and add new images appropriate/close to that location which have not already included, up to a maximum of 8 images in total.  An unlimited number of images can be manually added to any location.

Sometimes image and webcam URLs are date and time encoded.  PocketWeather handles this by providing a rich set of macros to generate the correct date and time encoded URL.  When manually adding a URL, the list of available macros is listed.

The user is given the option to submit a new image back to us for review, and inclusion into future versions of PocketWeather.

In App image calibration there an image can be configured to allow cities and weather stations to be automatically superimposed over the images is not supported.  However the user is given the option to submit the image to us to be reviewed, calibrated and included into future versions of PocketWeather.

10. Location Export – A specific location’s configuration can be exported to DropBox, or bumped to another device using the Bump service, using the “Export via DropBox”, or “Export via Bump” option.  Importing of a new location’s configuration, or full import can be also initialised from here.to another device using

11. Other General Changes – Apart from the visible changes, there have been a number of other enhancements and optimisations, including:

• Support for iOS4.2.1
• Support for iOS Multithreading
• Startup speed improvements
• Application stability
• Fixed automatic map selection
• More world maps and webcams
• Added missing USA Virgin Islands locations
• Corrected Samoa’s position
• Optimised web downloads
• Number of enhancements to custom view script (user-defined view support will come later)
• Number of enhancements to
• custom weather scripts (user-defined custom scripts will come later)
• Switched to Apple’s iAd advertising system

Download PocketWeather v2 and free upgrade for registered users

PocketWeather for iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad is available for FREE – yes you get ALL these really cool features for absolutely FREE with our ad-supported version.

If you get tired of presses on all those adverts (which helps us make a living..), and/or want more screen space to enjoy PocketWeather, then you can either upgrade your installation of PocketWeather using the In-App purchase (which will remove ads after the InApp purchase is processed), or, download PocketWeather Pro for the cost of $4.99, which is still amazing value for what you get!

Click here for PocketWeather at the AppStore

Click here for PocketWeather Pro at the AppStore

* PocketWeather Pro is exactly the same as the regular PocketWeather version – only without the ads from the start (so there is no need to go through the InApp purchase process to remove ads.

Coming Soon to PocketWeather.

Windows Mobile users familiar with PocketWeather will at this point be starting to lick there lips in anticipation of what is coming next, as this V2.0.0 release has now clearly paved the foundations for a stable platform to be built upon.  This version is still lacking user access to the much loved custom view and custom weather feed frameworks – I am continually amazed at what users create using both these features .  Rest assured that those features will be exposed as soon as possible.

And then there are lots of other features up our sleeves, as you know were we are dedicated software developers always tried to push the boundaries.

If you enjoy PocketWeather be sure to use the Twitter and Facebook buttons here below – and help us spread the word with your friends! Thanks!!

Meanwhile, we at SBSH would like to wish everybody a joyous New Year!

Posted in: PocketWeather, iPhone apps

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