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Dark Sky
There are loads of mobile apps that offer as much if not more information about the weather as you'd get if you had a meteorologist standing right next to you. Dark Sky is a new one that tries to do just one thing and do it really well. The one thing it does is predict whether it will rain and how much it will rain exactly where you are within the next hour. It provides no information past the hour and no information other than rain. It simply tells you how hard it's going to rain and then offers you a little chart up top that indicates about how wet you'll get.
You can also pull down a radar map and scroll through to see exactly where the clouds are moving. Developers say while meteorologists you see on television use models good for long-term forecasts, they use mathematical modeling and insist working well just 30-to-60 minutes into the future.
Incidentally, if there is no rain in your future, the app will tell you it's boring and offer to take to a spot where it's currently pouring. Dark Sky is an iOS app for $3.99.
Waze
A GPS driving app is predicting slow spots in your commute. The app is called Waze, and it's a social GPS app meaning it uses its large community of users to report what's going on, on nearby roads.
Just type in where you want to go and then as you're traveling, you'll see little icons on the screen that indicate everything from traffic to accidents to speed traps, all spotted by others also using the app. In turn, to help this work, you're expected to also report what you're experiencing. It can either be done with your voice or you can quick click through to hit an icon that indicates what's happening.
As you drill down further in the app there are lots of other features like the ability to communicate with others near you. Waze is a free app for iPhones, Androids, and Blackberries.