Weather app Stormcloud – which featured in our list of 2012’s top new applications – has been updated with a number of small new features, and a small new price.
Completely re-written from the ground up, Stormcloud 1.2 now supports multiple locations, ‘chameleonic backgrounds’, and boasts some extra animations.
The new chameleon background feature matches very closely to that used by Unity:
One ‘removal’ I’m sad to see go is the Unity Launcher badge displaying the temperature.
Although incapable of displaying metrical units due to a limitation of Unity, it was still a handy feature to have, and one that made keeping the app open, albeit hidden, worthwhile.
Preferences
There is no longer a dedicated button for switching to the Preferences pane.
Instead it’s located as the very last slide in the carousel; keep hitting the ‘right’ button in the top-right hand corner, or hit your left-arrow navigation key until you get to it.
Amongst the settings here you can add or remove additional locations: –
Choose your temperature and windspeed units; set a custom background, or enable a ‘Chameleonic’ one.
Small Cost
The biggest change in Stormcloud 1.2 isn’t to do with features at all, but price.
Previously a free application, Stormcloud was available to install via downloadable .Deb installers and a PPA. These are now no longer available.
From this release on the app has switched to a ‘paid’ model, though the source code remains freely available.
Stormcloud 1.2 costs $2.99 on the Ubuntu Software Center.
The price is perhaps a little bit more than I’d reasonably expect to pay for it, but the developer is hamstrung by Canonical in this regard: $2.99 is the lowest price at which they allow developers to sell their apps.
That said, $2.99 does get you a gorgeous looking weather app for the desktop, and helps to supports one of Ubuntu’s most and accomplished developers.
The hands behind Stormcloud also shaped to-do app Nitro Tasks; RSS app LightRead; CSS gradient generator Gradiator – all of which they offer for free.