Weather

How dangerous is your commute? The answer may depend on the weather.

In addition to speed traps and red light cameras, Njection.com is now offering people the option to view the traffic accident history of a route based on past weather conditions using the Njection Mobile iPhone application.

Njection took five years of accident data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and merged it with global weather conditions from WeatherBug.com. Using Microsoft Virtual Earth, this mashup enables people to see what accidents have occurred in a particular area, and if they want, filter the data to show … Read more

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 … Read more

As the weather warms up, it's time to get a move on. Spring has sprung, the baseball season is about to get underway, and everywhere people are going to be spending more time outside. Those people are going to be hungry. Nothing beats spending a warm afternoon surrounded by fresh air and the sweet smell of grilled meats and vegetables. This year, plan on taking your grilling show on the road and really perk up your picnics.

The Picnic Time Vulcan Cooler With Grill can help you achieve your grilling mobility. In one convenient package, you can carry all … Read more

The weather over the past few days has been awful across the U.S. Just as I was thinking that spring had finally sprung, another six inches of snow fell and, once again, I was forced to head outside and start shoveling.

Only this time, I didn't even know the storm was coming. I hadn't visited my typical weather destinations on the Web and I hadn't checked out my mobile apps. It was, for the lack of a better term, a perfect storm. So when I woke up yesterday morning and saw just how much snow had … Read more

Just in time for Groundhog Day, I pulled together a small collection of desktop weather applications for checking everything from current weather conditions to 15-day forecasts and detailed readings on wind and clouds. For those with modest forecast needs, Yahoo and Google both offer a small, attractive widget that shows the temperature at a glance. The only problem is, you have to have already installed a much larger desktop application in order to get the tiny widget.

On Friday, AccuWeather released an even simpler solution--a small weather-checker for Windows, Mac, and Linux that runs on the free Adobe AIR platform (… Read more

Even if you're not one to trust a groundhog's shadow as your weather vane, watching a pet rodent emerge from a hole before hundreds of onlookers is a fascinating North American ritual. The rest of us may not have the prognosticating meteorological savvy of a Punxsutawney Phil, Buckeye Chuck, or Shubenacadie Sam, but on February 2, we can have the next best thing--weather widgets and applications.

Here are some of our favorite ways to read the mercury on our Windows PCs.

Weather Watcher Live A full, but well-ordered display, detailed forecast, animated map, and severe weather alerts are … Read more

This updated weather application offers a smorgasbord of weather-related data. Once you've provided a zip code or city, Weather Watcher Live's easy-to-use interface displays detailed weather information, including forecasts, temperature, and expected highs and lows. You can add as many locations as you'd like and switch among them using the system-tray icon.

Automatic updates keep you abreast of the current wind speed, dew point, humidity, barometric pressure, and moon phases. You can display your location's current weather conditions by mousing over the temperature readout in your system tray. Weather Watcher Live provides extensive customizations, measurement conversions, … Read more

It's not the sort of thing that excites your typical Silicon Valley venture capitalist, but companies that weatherize homes could be the sleeper green-business success stories this year.

Many people would like to lower their household energy bills but need an expert to recommend what steps to take as part of a long-term plan.

There's also a substantial amount of government support for energy-efficient retrofits, including from President Obama who has set a target of lowering utility bills at 2 million homes. The federal stimulus plan now being debated in Washington, D.C., sets aside $6 billion to … Read more

Viigo has certainly matured since its early days. While it now grabs weather, financial news, flight status, and sports scores in addition to your news and blog feeds, it's still, at its core, the fastest, most complete RSS reader for BlackBerry. To users' eternal benefit, Viigo makes finding, subscribing to, and adding your own newsfeeds extremely simple with a long list of presets, browsable categories, and a way to add favorite RSS URLs, even from aggregators.

The extra channels to track the weather, flights, and stocks are bonuses, and a testament to the extensibility of Viigo's original engine. … Read more