YoWindow

There's all sorts of efficient ways to get a weather report. You can get one even when you're out, using your mobile device. Efficiency is all well and good, but how about aesthetics? YoWindow is not your typical weather forecast software. Besides telling you how's the weather outside, it also SHOWS you the weather.

There's nothing out of the ordinary while installing YoWindow except the occasional prompting for an extra toolbar or something. The package is just above 6 Mb so you won't have to wort about your precious free space.

The beauty of the program lays in it's interface. It's a window containing a cartoonish landscape. Besides the standard weather statistics it shows you, you can also see how it affects the scenery. The sun will be positioned according to the time, bushes or trees will be blown by the wind, if it's cloudy in the real world, you'll also see clouds in the landscape or if it's raining the interface will behave the same way. You may have got the picture already. It simulates a window through which you can see how's the weather. An excellent feature if you're too lazy to turn around and see the real deal. The program allows you to see the forecast for the previous or next days (assuming they're accurate). This can be done either by clicking the day in question or by scrolling through a timeline which will create a neat time-lapse effect. You can find your way back to the original position just by clicking the "live" button. You can add any location you want to be forecasted without needing to make additional settings regarding your time zone or anything else. This will be done automatically by YoWindow.

There are a lot of ways you can manipulate this window. First of all, you obviously need a constant connection to the Internet for the weather forecast. The fun part is that the program auto-detects the city you're in, so there's no need to scroll through a list of countries and cities. If you get tired of the landscape you can choose another one or make one from your own picture. But doing so won't be that impressive. The custom image will remain static all the time. The only thing that will change will be the lighting according to the time of day or if the sky is clear or not.

A possible design flaw is the fact that the window needs to be active all the time in order to see the weather in real time. If you click on something else, the landscape will become monochrome and nothing will move anymore. On the plus side, you can set the program to act as your screen saver and you won't need to lift a finger except for actually selecting the screen saver from Windows' settings.

Pro:
YoWindow has a really neat of showing you the weather conditions. Best of all, you have a wide range of customizations to make with minimum effort.

Con:
The images you select from your personal collection are not so life-like. Also, if you want additional landscapes, you have to buy the program.

Your screen saver can be made into a window through which you can see how's the weather in real-time. YoWindow let's you do this with minimum effort.