A few months ago I was approached by one of the Product Managers at Spb for my opinion on what functionality I would like to see see in a weather plug-in for the Today screen of my Pocket PC.  A few weeks later I was sent a very promising early copy of the software and this weekend l received the final release... very nice it is too, highly customisable, skinable, with Spb's usual high quality and attention to detail.

When installed, Spb Weather adds a Today screen plug-in plus a start menu shortcut to the configuration tool.  The default view is a tabbed four day forecast - a small Spb icon (providing access to the configuration screen) to the left of tabs across the top of the plug-in which permit switching between selected cities, below which is the four day forecast displayed in icons and text.  The icons represent the various types of weather with a total of 16 for day time and 14 for night time conditions possible, the text usually indicates the upper and lower expected temperatures plus the day of week.  When data is available, the product will cache up to ten days (including today) forecasts, permitting fairly accurate information to be at hand without needing to sync. regularly.

Tapping and holding on the tabs or icons displays the popup menu, this contains some or all of the following entries, dependant on the view selected:

• Refresh - on demand refresh of the data for the currently displayed city.
• Refresh All - displayed if more than one city has been configured, on demand refresh of the data for all cities configured.
• Cities - displays a sub menu of all the configured cities with the current one indicated, enables another to be chosen.
• Views - displays a sub menu of the following alternative views:
  
  
  • 4 days - displays four large icons with the day, max. and min. temperature beneath.
    
  • 5 days - displays five medium icons with the day, max. and min. temperature beneath.
    
  • 7 days - displays seven small icons with the day, max. and min. temperature beneath.
    
  • Multiline - displays one or more rows of five small icons with the max. and min. temperature between (N.B. when set to just one city, this view has the smallest Today screen footprint).
• Skins - displays a sub menu of the available skins (icon styles) permits the user to select one.
• Header - for the 4/5/7 day views, displays a sub menu enabling the user to choose between a tabbed header of all configured cities, just the current city or no header.
• Options... - displays the options screen (see below) .

Tapping on a city tab in Tabbed Header mode switches the display to show the relevant data for that city;  with Selected City mode, tapping on the city name cycles to the next configured city in the list;  in No Header mode it is necessary to use the popup menu to switch cities.

Tapping on a weather icon in the plug-in displays a popup window containing the weather details for the selected day.  When available this shows the conditions icons for various periods of the day complete with the expected temperature range, humidity range, wind speed and direction for each time interval.  At the top of the dialog is the city and date, plus two scroll buttons to change the date, the most recent update time and data source is displayed at the bottom.  For those days where the detailed data is not available, one weather condition icon is displayed along with the anticipated max. and min. temperatures, plus humidity range, wind speed and direction if available.

The Options screen, accessible from the start menu, Today settings screen and the plug-in itself, consists of five tabs:

• Cities - displays a checkbox list of the currently configured cities plus buttons to permit entries to be added, updated and deleted, plus the order changed.  Cities may be excluded from appearing in the plug-in by deselecting them in the list, without having to remove their entries.  When adding, the user selects the Country, City and Weather source and can rename to city if desired;  editing an entry permits the name and weather source to be altered.  A Custom menu item permits the user to add a specific city by entering the Name, selecting the weather source and entering the international city code.
• Views - this tab enables the user to select the view and skin for display and provides a preview of the plug-in.  For the Multiline view, the user may choose the number of cities to display, other views permit the header option to be set.
• Units - enables the user to select the units for Temperature (C or F), Wind speed (m/s, km/h, mph or knots) and Pressure (mBar or mmHg).
• Sync - permits the update settings to be configured:  whether to update manually or automatically, the frequency of updates, update when docked and/or after city added.
• Stats - displays a variety of statistics regarding weather traffic.

There is also one menu item, Tools, on the options screen which has the following items:

• Weather Sources... - lists the current Weather Sources (five are initially configured) and permits them to be added and deleted.  Adding a new source requires a source name and a datafile path - the datafile must be synchronised or copied onto the device via an alternative mechanism.
• Skins... - the user may add new skins by browsing to an appropriate skin file and adding it to the skins list.  Skins consist simply of two bitmaps of a specific design stored in zip files in a single directory (per skin) and may be created using almost any bitmap editing tool.  Five skins are initially installed with further skins available for download.
• Registration... - permits registration of the product.
• About... - displays the product version information.

A great deal of thought has gone into this product to make it deserving of valuable space on the Today screen.  I value my Today screen real estate highly, using it primarily for appointments and task, but I have become very used to having this plug-in visible to the point where I no longer bother to check the TV weather in the morning.  The simplicity of the design allows for a surprising amount of data to be both directly visible and readily available. The build quality is no less than we've come to expect from Spb and, best of all, it can plug into the new plug-in enabled version of Pocket Plus, released only three days ago;  add a new tab, tap a few controls and voila, the weather plug-in is now a tab on Pocket Plus - just beautiful.

Perhaps the only point I could take issue with Spb Weather is that it doesn't seem to switch from the day to night icons when I would expect (only when connected to the net and long after sunset) but this is more a limitation of the data and not the product and one I am assured will be addressed in a future release.  From an Australian perspective, my one real complaint would be the apparent total lack of any local data feeds for the weather data.  Try as I might I have been unable to find a suitable local RSS or XML data source and must therefore rely on overseas sources (e.g. Weather.Com and Intellicast), which do appear a little less accurate than the local forecasts.  However, by configuring two Perth entries in Spb Weather from the two more accurate sources I can view both with a single tap and take an average which is quite adequate - after all, since when has the weatherman been accurate!

At $14.95USD (and 20% off for existing Spb customers) I think that Spb are onto a winner here, particularly in light of the new Pocket Plus plug-in mechanism.

My forecast for Spb Weather is a very sunny 9.9/10