The Weather Channel’s official app took way too long to load on start, sticking me with a “retrieving the latest weather data” for what seemed like forever. It took this long to load every time the app ran. Perhaps 30 seconds isn’t really long, but when you just want a quick look before bed, it can feel like ages, especially when other apps are much faster. It seemed like about half the time, the video it offers (while a neat added feature if you like to watch a video forecast) would not load, instead sticking on a “loading movie” screen.

Weatherbug loaded more quickly, but presented a rather stark looking white screen with no indication if it is currently cloudy or raining. Also, each time I changed options (say from current conditions to forecast), it changed the ad displayed, which would be more of a problem if I was on an iPhone on 3G coverage. While the forecasts were broken down nicely, it first takes you to a summary page where you can only see the first 5-6 words of the forecast, which you have to tap on to then see a full page of complete forecasts. This is probably to prevent using too much data on 3G, but it’s annoying too. Like TWC’s app, it offered video forecasts and shots from local outdoor webcams.

Accuweather, my favorite, shows the current condition as a background image, even showing the phase of the moon, and shows the “feels like” temperature prominently. It also offers nice indices of not only UV and air quality, but sinus headaches, dogwalking, stargazing, and much more. The forecast goes up to 15 days instead of just 10. There is a colorful, easily read risk screen that shows the risk of storms, rain, snow, ice, wind, and fog over the next 8 hours. There are 4 tabs for video and each tab features 4 videos to choose from. Forecast offers multiple videos to choose from for the forecast, from local to regional to national to breaking weather info. Lifestyle had places to travel and a story about why some ache when it rains. News had history and weather 101, and the fun tab had bloopers and outtakes, and the wild world of weather.

Of course there are paid versions of these apps with different features and no ads.

1. We Shout – Tatu
2. I Want Someone To Love – Sailor Moon soundtrack
3. Hands – Jewel
4. I Can’t Stand It – Danielle Paris
5. Wild One – Faith Hill
6. YMCA – Village People
7. Never Get Over You – Expose
8. The Lover After Me – Savage Garden
9. Home Is In Your Heart – Care Bears
10. Fernando – Abba

Huh, I love dance music and not a single dance song came up in that list. Oh well, that’s randomness for you!

Bought a Single? Get the Album for Less with Complete My Album at iTunes.

Apple just called Giz Editor Noah Robischon to apologize about a few video iPods—less than 1%— that shipped with the Windows virus RavMonE.exe. The virus snuck onto iPods made after September 12th, via a Windows assembly line machine. The bug won’t cause any damage to macs and iPods, but it will reduce the security of Windows machines that the dirty pod passes the virus onto.

Actually, only 25 have been reported as infected. That’s 25 iPods, total. Yet apparently, Apple had this to say:

As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses, and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it.

Sure, blame it on Windows. *rolleyes*

They recommend you download a 30-day trial of a virus scanner like Microsoft Live One Care, McAfee, or Norton, to get rid of the virus. Nonsense – if you don’t have antivirus software ALREADY installed on your PC, it’s as good as toast.

I just got bit by a change in iTunes 7′s behaviour that may be less than intuitive…

In previous versions of iTunes, the preferences for syncing your iPod were controlled through the normal iTunes Preferences pane. There were three options… Automatically update all of my songs and playlists, Automatically update selected playlists only, and manually manage my songs and playlists. These options basically controlled whether the iPod was in manual or automatic sync mode.

With iTunes 7, the iPod preferences are now shown in the main screen when you select your iPod from the source tree. A number of tabs appear across the top of the screen for the various content types (ie, Music, Movies, TV Shows, etc). On each of these tabs is a check-box to select whether or not you want to sync that content, followed by another setting to determine whether to sync all of it, or only selected items.

Note that this “Sync” checkbox does NOT control manual mode. DE-selecting this checkbox tells iTunes that you want that content to be REMOVED from your iPod on the next sync.

To set your iPod to manual mode, you have to choose the option, Manually Manage My Music and Videos on the Summary tab. This is a global setting for both music and video content.