Minutely Review

It's fair to say that crowdsourcing in various different guises is a big thing these days. Whether it's collating various views on the latest movie, or tracking the traffic nearby (hello, Waze), people love to work together for the most accurate news possible. The latest genre to implement such collaborative efforts is that of Minutely; a social weather forecasting app that combines crowdsourcing with traditional weather data.

It's worth immediately pointing out that one's mileage will vary depending on how often other users in the area use Minutely, but its potential is pretty great. The app offers a typical weather reporting screen offering the current temperature, weather conditions, and a suggestion of what's to come. Initially, Minutely seems pretty standard for a weather app.

The crucial difference here is that if the weather reported via the local weather stations is somewhat inaccurate, users can report the conditions for themselves. When used by many, it's a great guide to exactly what's going on and where. After all, we've all had times when the weather report just hasn't been correct for our area, right? It's a neat way of doing things and combining it with conventional data means that one, potentially, gets quite a clear view of what's happening. Reporting stuff also has a gamification style element to it, reinforcing reasons to give it a shot.

Besides such features, it's also possible to check out the weather forecasts for the next week, as well as view a 3D real-time radar that shows just what's ahead in a more interesting fashion than solely through text.

Minutely is a decent all-rounder. Excluding some issues with it remembering if I wanted to use Fahrenheit or Celsius, I didn't run into any problems. To truly enjoy it does require others in the local area to use it, though, which in some cases might not be as effective as it would be in major cities. Still, it's a great concept and one that's certainly quite original to the weather app world at the moment.