weather

Jack White (White Stripes, Raconteurs, Dead Weather) has a cool video demonstrating his "triple-decker," three-records-in-one 12-inch single, "Blue Blood Blues." You have to watch the video to see exactly how the technology works, but let's just say for now it's a 7 inch 45 rpm single glued to one side of a 12-inch single; but the 12-inch can be pried open to retrieve another 45! It's a limited to 300 edition so I'm sure it'll sell out quickly. The Triple-Decker Record is a Jack White invention; and it's assembled by … Read more

The federally funded weatherization program has been expanded to cover comprehensive home energy retrofits, rather than only traditional energy audits.

The Department of Energy on Thursday announced that is has been funded with an additional $120 million and that participating energy service providers have weatherized 31,600 homes in the U.S. as of June.

Of that total, $90 million is being made available to home efficiency providers to offer installation of on-site solar power, efficient appliances, and home energy monitoring tools.

Traditionally, home weatherization providers do an audit of consumers' homes and recommend ways to save energy through air … Read more

Getting more accurate forecasts about space weather may not help you decide whether to water your garden, but it could soon clue you in better to when events in the solar system may be putting a damper on your electronic activities.

Johns Hopkins University, Boeing, and Iridium Communications announced on Wednesday that they have launched a new space-based service that they say will help scientists monitor magnetic storms around Earth.

Dubbed the Active Magnetosphere and Planetary Electrodynamics Response Experiment (AMPERE), the system utilizes commercial satellites orbiting Earth to take magnetic-field measurements in real time. The result is output that gets … Read more

I'm a city boy, so I don't relate to the "outdoor" speaker category all that well, but I certainly acknowledge the need for such things. For me outdoor audio is limited to my iPod and whatever headphones I'm reviewing. Geoffrey Morrison over at Home Entertainment magazine sees the bigger picture so he reviewed the Polk Audio Atrium Sat30 satellite ($150 each) and Atrium Sub10 subwoofer ($300), and came away pretty impressed by what he heard.

It's a plus that Polk managed to avoid the usual styling gimmicks that most outdoor sound systems rely on, … Read more

If you want to know what the weather is, the saying goes, look outside. MyFreeWeather allows users to do just that, without ever having to get up from their computers. This attractive weather program lets users view illustrated versions of the sky in their selected location, with both the time of day and weather accurately portrayed. With features typical of other weather software and the nifty sky graphics to boot, we think MyFreeWeather is a nice choice for a go-to weather program.

MyFreeWeather's interface is sleek and intuitive, with the sky illustration filling the upper third or so and … Read more

We're always on the lookout for a good weather app, something that provides accurate information and is easy to access without getting in the way. AniWeather for Chrome is a great Chrome add-on that presents information from the Weather Channel in an attractive, well-integrated interface.

The add-on appears to the right of Chrome's address bar, displaying an icon representing current conditions along with the temperature. Click the icon and the five-day forecast will appear. The Ani in AniWeather refers to the program's animations, which we really liked; they're subtle, but they make the forecast a little … Read more

I've now been an iPad owner for exactly four hours. First impressions? It's heavier than I thought, and I'm furious with iTunes for hanging--repeatedly--during my initial sync attempts. (Weird workaround: After successfully syncing my iPhone, the iPad started syncing normally.)

Newspaper apps? Fantastic. JamPad? Dazzling. Netflix? I think a tear escaped my eye. But you know which app I'll probably end up using the most? The ingenious 99-cent Desktop, which divides the iPad screen in half so you can run two apps at once.

Well, OK, not apps, but any of the 10 "applets" built into Desktop. These include a Web browser (complete with thumbnail-enhanced bookmarks, a nice touch); an e-mail composer; Google Maps; unit and currency converters; a calculator; a dictionary; and a weather monitor.

So think of it: when your iPad is pulling desk duty (resting in one of these five cheap/DIY stands, no doubt), you can keep, say, a browser and calculator running all the time. Or a unit converter and iPad stat monitor. It's your choice, and Desktop gives you the option of dividing the screen side-by-side or top-to-bottom. (You can also run any tool full-screen if you prefer.)

Great idea, right? Just one problem: Desktop lacks a few tools it desperately needs, and a few of the tools it has aren't fully baked.… Read more

Although it's not as fast as just looking outside the window, WeatherBar adds an icon to your Windows 7 taskbar that will keep you on top of current weather conditions. This simple app installs a weather monitor on your Windows taskbar that changes the icon depending on the predicted weather. The progress meter indicates the relative humidity, and the jump list offers a full four-day prediction including highs, lows, and a predictive icon.

WeatherBar offers a standard program window, too. Along with a large version of the four-day predictions, you can enter in a city name or area code, … Read more

Not that you need your clothes to tell you what the weather's like outside, but a climate-reflecting garment still counts as a rather cool (or hot as the case may be) idea.

Contributing to the ever-growing field of wearable technology, Montreal-based digital media artist Valerie Lamontagne came up with a series of dresses that wirelessly transmit data like temperature, wind speed, humidity, and rainfall back to the garment. Custom-built circuitboards receive the information and relay it to the clothing's internal circuitry to affect real-time changes in keeping with the natural environment.

The gold, yellow, and brown Sun Dress, … Read more