There are plenty of home screen widgets for Google Android that will show you weather forecasts for the next few days at a glance. But few will give you detailed forecasts for the next 24 hours. Aix Weather Widget does just that.

The free widget shows a graph on your home screen with the estimated temperatures for the next 24 hours. You can also see the current te,[eratire and relative humidity.

You can choose how frequently the graph is updated, select whether to show temperatures in Fahrenheit or Celsius, and adjust the colors used in the widget. That’s about it for the settings now, but the developer says a future version will also let you adjust the time periods for the forecast so you can see more than just the next day’s weather if you like.

Apple may not have added support for Android-style home screen widgets to iOS 5, but the company did add a weather forecast utility and support for stock information to the Notification Center. When you pull down from the top of the screen to view missed calls, messages, or alerts from other applications, you can also check the weather or view the latest market updates. But what if you want to see sports scores, the latest news stories, or other information?

Right now there’s official support for third party developers to build “widgets” that will show up in the Notification Center. But developer Will Homer has figured out how to do it even without Apple’s support. He’s posted the source code for a simple “Hello World” widget, which you can see pictured above.

It should be interesting to see whether Apple eventually adds Notification Center widget creation tools to the Software Developer Kit for iOS 5. I could also see Apple deciding not to make it too easy to hook into the notification area, since it could quickly get littered with third party widgets. While Android users can pick and choose where they want to place widgets on various home screens, the Notification Center in iOS 5 provides a limited amount of space which will be used by widgets and alerts.

via 9 to 5 Mac

The power widget that comes with newer versions of Google Android makes it easy to access a few system functions from your home screen including brightness, wireless connectivity, and data synchronization. But Elixir is a third party app that lets you do just about anything from your home screen.

Elixir is a powerful system information tool that also has highly customizable home screen widgets that let you place icons for battery use or temperature, CPU usage or frequency, date, time, storage use, and other statistics about your phone. You can also place toggles on the home screen allowing you to turn WiFi or mobile data on or off with a switch, enable or disable airplane mode, screen rotation, Bluetooth, or most other configurable options.

The app also lets you place program shortcuts within a widget — which comes in handy if you want to cram more shortcuts on a page than you can normally fit on a Google Android home screen.

Widgets are available in sizes from 1×1 to 7×7.

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Any weather app for Android worth its salt includes a home screen widget that can let you see the current temperature and other conditions without launching the full app. But Apple’s iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch don’t support widgets, so most iOS weather apps just show you a cute picture of a sun and you have to actually load the app to see anything else.

But one developer has figured out a way to show you the current temperature on your home screen — by using the iPhone notification system. Instead of showing you how may instant messages or friend requests are waiting for you, Fahrenheit sends an alert with the current temperature.

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HTC has introduced a new version of its HTC Sense user interface for smartphones and tablets with high resolution displays. The new version of Sense runs on the new HTC Flyer tablet, with its 1024 x 600 pixel display and has a few new tricks such as:

• Support for landscape and portrait views
• 3D cube-style animation effects when flipping between home screens
• New full screen widgets including music, books, people and picture widgets

SlashGear also snagged a photo of an HTC phone running a new HTC video chat app for Android. It doesn’t look all that different from Skype, Fring, Facetime, or other mobile video chat apps, but I suppose it’s nice to have another option — although it’s not clear whether HTC will release the app for non-HTC devices. I’m not sure how useful a communications app is if it only lets you call people using hardware from a single manufacturer (unless that manufacturer is Apple, maybe).

You can see some of the features of the new HTC Sense user interface for the HTC Flyer tablet in the MobileCrunch video after the break.

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*Spark is an app from HipLogic which is designed to replace your Android Home Screen with something… different. Instead of a customizable set of screens which you can place shortcuts and widgets haphazardly on, *Spark has a more streamlined look. It’s still customizable, but not quite as much as the default Android Home Screen.

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At the top of the *Spark screen you’ll find a weather widget, followed by a tray for program shortcuts, news headlines, deals, and your current status and the latest updates from Facebook and/or Twitter. You can disable any of these widgets if you don’t need them, and you can customize which application shortcuts show up in the shortcut tray. You’re not limited to three — you can slide the tray to the left and right to load additional shortcuts.

You can click on any widget for additional information, such as a detailed weather forecast, more news stories, or your Facebook Feed or Twitter stream.

At the bottom of the *Spark dashboard there are three shortcuts. The icon in the center brings up an app drawer with all of your installed programs. The phone icon launches the phone app. And the globe icon launches your web browser.

Unfortunately, it’s when you do these things that the whole *Spark paradigm sort of starts to fall apart. The app replaces your home screen with an attractive, easy to use alternative — but it doesn’t necessarily look like anything else on your phone. And that means the transition from, say, *Spark to the phone app is a bit jarring as you switch from one color scheme and UI to another.

Also, the app isn’t nearly as customizable as other Android Home Screen apps. The news, weather, and deals widgets are powered by CBS News, Weatherbug, and Groupon, respectively. There’s no way to change these default services. You can only disable the widget if you don’t want to use it at all.

Still, *Spark is available as a free download, so it doesn’t hurt to check it out. It’s available from the Android Market, or you can download the app from sparkmyphone.com.

You can find some more screenshots after the break.

via Android Guys

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Google introduced a handy Power Control widget for the home screen with Android 2.1 a while back, letting you adjust the screen brightness, toggle WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth, and enable or disable auto-sync of your Google data with just a click or two. But if you’ve been asking yourself why that widget can’t also show your battery status, toggle your phone’s LED flashlight, enable WiFi tethering, or other settings, it looks like there’s an app for you.

It’s called Power Control Plus, and it’s available as a $1.99 download from the Android Market.

Power Control Plus lets you create widgets of various sizes which you can place on your home screen, and lets you access almost everything you can find hidden in your phone’s Settings menus, and a few things which aren’t — such as the LED flashlight functionality on Android 2.2 devices with LED flash capabilities.

For instance, you can toggle Airplane mode,  silent mode, vibrate mode, WiFi, haptic feedback, 2G, 3G, and 4G data, USB tethering, and WiFi tethering. You can find a complete list at the Power Control Plus web site. In order to configure a widget, just long-press anywhere on the home screen, select the add widget option, select the Power Control Plus widget size you want to place on your home screen, and then start picking functions from the drop-down box.

via Lifehacker

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Google has launched an updated version of its Google Voice app for Android. This is basically the same build that was leaked a few weeks ago, but now it’s available for download directly from Google.

For the most part the new Google Voice app works just like its predecessor, allowing you to see transcripts of voicemail messages or listen to recordings, star messages, or send text messages using your Google Voice account. But the new version also includes two home screen widgets.

The first is a Settings widget which has four icons, allowing you to launch the full app, compose and send text messages, change dialing preferences, or adjust your settings to Do Not Disturb.

There’s also an Inbox widget which shows the first few lines of your most recent message. You can also hit the left and right arrows to see previews of additional messages.