Review: USA Traffic & Weather - 5 Code Giveaway
Overview
USA Traffic & Weather is a new app from appscroatia.com that is extremely handy for getting local weather, traffic and news information as you are traveling. The app sports a very sleek UI, is easy to navigate, easy to work with and gives the user a lot of useful data. All the information is neatly divided into tabs for quick switching.
Features
The Five Tabs: 1. Weather with a seven day forecast. To get your area you can either enter your city, state, or zip code. The seven day forecast includes current condition, high-low temperatures, as well as the date with nice graphical icons. Easily flip thorough the days with just an easy swipe of the finger. 2. Traffic conditions in your area based on GPS location and Yahoo! The Traffic data was very accurate as I drove around the Atlanta area. I had alerts letting me know of construction and accidents so I could re-route to avoid the delays. By tapping on the alerts you can zoom into the area affected with a push pin to mark the spot.
3. Report weather in your area. This part of USA Traffic & Weather works a lot like Trapster, which is another app that I personally use a lot as I spend most of my time on the road. By pressing the standard write icon in the upper left hand of the screen you can put in adverse weather reports that get sent out for others in your area. USA Traffic & Weather gives you quite a selection of weather templates to choose from such as rain, snow, hail or you can opt out of the templates and write your own data.
4. Get and report breaking news. You can share news with a selection of templates including UFO sightings, which I thought was especially clever. Again you can opt out of the template and write your own report.
5. The last tab 'More' allows users to access the F.A.Q. as well as select to get the reports for the entire country. You can also select your own state and maybe some neighboring states for local travel.
The Breakdown:
The Good:
USA Traffic & Weather provides a lot of handy data especially for those of your frequently on the go whether it is around the area or on an extended drive I know I will personally use it on my next drive back to Pennsylvania from Georgia.
In my opinion the developer did an excellent job on the interface itself the color scheme is one of my personal favorites and as stated before very easy to use.
Additionally USA Traffic & Weather gives you the ability to track your location live via Google Maps with a push pin icon and on screen street name and digital speedometer. In the upper right hand corner you can tap the familiar iPhone arrow icon and email your current location to friends and family.
The Bad: The only bad I found was that the weather seven day forecast doesn't seem to include all cities and towns but I believe it is the database it is pulling the information from as I have seen this in web based and desktop weather apps as well. I mean pulling Atlanta weather is good but I live and work 20 miles outside the city and my area wasn't listed. The only other additions that would be nice are landscape mode and push notifications.The Verdict:
With it's abundance of data and information and ease of use and configuration and the ability to provide live data to other users of the app as well. I give this app a big thumbs up and highly recommend it for everyone's iPhone.
We have five promo codes to give away for this app so leave a comment on how much you love this site by 11:59pm EST on 11/05/09 and you may be chosen at random to receive a code. Remember to leave us your email address.
Update: 11/06/09 12:17am Congrats to the random winners of the 5 promo codes for USA Traffic & Weather - Chris K, Carrie, Doug, Bryan F and Tyler You should have an email with your code if you don't get it please let us know. Thanks everyone for the wonderful comments! My apologies for the mistake I didn't realize we had two Bryans but Bryan F was the one chosen randomly.
