The Play Store is
easier to navigate these days, but at the same time the number of apps
has ballooned to such proportions that you can easily miss the best
stuff. We’re here to filter the flow of apps for you and pick out only
the coolest stuff. The following apps are all worth your time, and maybe
money. Make sure to hit the gallery above for images of each pick.
Weather Timeline
Weather apps have been done to death–there are probably a thousand
different apps that offer the same data in more or less the same way.
Then there’s Weather Timeline.
This app pulls its data from Forecast.io and sets everything up as a
timeline you can scroll through to get the forecast. It even lets you
jump into the distant future to see what climate patterns predict for
the world of tomorrow.
The interface in Weather Timeline is set up as a vertical list of
cards. At the top is the current condition for your chosen location,
then add you scroll down you get forecasts of the upcoming week. There’s
also a handy snippet of text that tells you if there’s going to be any
troublesome weather in the next hour or 48 hours. Each block is color
coded as well with darker colors reserved for sunset/night as well as
rain in the forecast.
At the top is a button for pulling up weather radar, and the bottom
has the time machine. If you decide to travel into the future, Weather
Timeline has a fun little DeLorean animation and Android L style
animation. Don’t take the 20 year forecast as gospel, but it should be
in the ballpark for dates closer to today. You can experience the
weather in timeline format for the low price of $0.99.
Duet
Rhythm-based action games can be fun or incredibly aggravating, but
the best games in this genre ride the border between these two extremes.
This is the case with Duet,
which seems fundamentally impossible when you begin playing. Your goal
is to spin the red and blue orbs around each other in an intricate dance
that allows the to avoid all the oncoming obstacles.
The blocks raining down from the top of the screen will start off
moving at the same speed all the time, but that’s only to get you used
to the controls. You simply press and hold on the left or right side of
the screen to turn counter-clockwise and clockwise. If you don’t turn at
the right time to swing one of the orbs out of the way–splat. You have
to begin the level again.
As you get used to the basics, Duet will throw new types of blocks at
you. They might fall at different speeds, swing back and forth, or even
spin like helicopter blades. You can really only succeed in Duet if you
can get into the zone and stop thinking about how long to press on the
screen–you must become the game. Sparing even a moment to explicitly
plan your moves will result in failure.
Each level in Duet is no more than a minute long, but it might take a
long, long time to beat it. The sense accomplishment when you do it,
though, is amazing. Duet is a free download with full version in-app
purchase upgrade for $2.99. The game is definitely worth it, but the
soundtrack is excellent too.
Google News and Weather
Google first bundled a news and weather app with Android years ago and proceeded to forget all about it. Now the News and Weather app
has been added to Google Play and it will make a handsome addition to
any home screen. It actually looks a bit like the Google Now widget, but
it doesn’t take up a stupid amount of screen space.
This app comes with a pair of widgets–one for only weather or news,
and one that has weather up top and a scrollable news stream below. The
second one is resizable to fit in any layout, but it needs at least two
rows to work. Tapping on a story will open the link in your default
browser immediately, but the news and weather app lists additional
stories. You can also set your news preferences here and browse around
in different sections.
The weather data will automatically update based on your location
with current conditions and several days of forecast on the home screen,
but the number shown depends on how large you have the widget. In the
app, the forecast also comes with a neat temperature and precipitation
graph. It’s a nice little app and costs nothing whatsoever.
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