USA Traffic & Weather – Two great things together

This app found me!  The developer reached out to me on Twitter and asked that I take a look at it.  As I have done in the past I did so with a quickness.  Okay maybe not that quick but still I looked at it and that’s really the point here.  This app is BRAND spanking new.  Fresh off the press if you will.  Why point this out?  Well it’s another crowd sourced app.  What I mean is that the core of the app relies on the users to supply it with up to the second information.

There are many apps to tell you the weather and there are apps to help with the traffic but as far as I know there aren’t that many that do both.  Furthermore I think there are even less that rely on user updates for the latest information.

Weather Screen

Let’s face it we have all faced times where we needed to know the weather and traffic conditions for a particular location, be it downtown or across the state.   We all travel and we need to know what conditions we are going to face.  Granted if you’re just traveling across town you might not really need the weather because it should be just about the same as where you start from, but what about the traffic?  You’re going to need to know if there is an accident on your favorite short cut.

Let’s back up for a minute and start with the first screen you’re going to come across when you load the app.  The main weather screen.  This has the weather from the local weather station for the location you select.  As you can see in the screen shot I’m pulling from the Raleigh-Durham weather station and it’s a little chilly right now.  You do have 7 days of weather to view here so feel free to flick to the right to get future weather for your selected area.

Traffic Screen

Next up is the traffic section.  There are two types of traffic reports here, Yahoo and user generated, both are rather self explanatory.  Yahoo traffic comes from Yahoo’s traffic service and the user generated comes from fellow USA Traffic & Weather app users.  It is this user updatable feature that sets apart this app from a regular traffic report.  The news on TV is going to be delayed from getting the reports of traffic to a degree, while something like this can be just about instantaneous.

User Weather

On this screen you’ll see the username of the person that reported it, the location, a brief description and a few icons.  The icons represent the type of issue and a map pin.  The map pin icon is selectable and will take you to a map of the traffic incident as it was reported by the user.  You also have the ability to report an issue on this page by selecting the write icon in the upper left hand corner.

The user weather screen is more or less similar to the traffic page, minus the yahoo section.  You can report weather in the upper left hand corner, you have the same icons and user information with each report.  I’m not going to spend a lot of time here.

The Breaking News section is used for just that – breaking news.  It is once again set up the same as the traffic and user weather screens.  I know it may seem that this is repetitive but it’s actually nice to have this sort of set up.  Once you learn where things are you just apply that to each screen.  Makes sense to me.

The More screen has an FAQ and the section for selecting the states from which you want to get user reported traffic and weather reports.  Now I will say that I think the area needs a little work because while I have North Carolina selected, I’m still getting reports from all sorts of places.  I plan on reaching out to the developer on this as I plan on using this app beyond just for the review.

Cost: Free

What I thought in a nutshell!
Use-ability
How user friendly is the app and its interface?
Practicality
How likely is it that someone is going to use it?
Neat Factor
Will this app wow you?

Overall
How did it fair overall?