Technology Lab / Information Technology

Review: Bing Apps are fast, slick, and responsive


Bing Weather: Shiny, with a 100% chance of Bing

Enlarge / Framingham, MA, the world's best suburb.

The weather app has all the options you'd expect and want. You can add locations to favorites for quick reference, use location services to show you the weather where you are, switch between Fahrenheit and Celsius. The home screen shows weather for the next ten days, and hourly forecasts for the next 24 hours. Data is pulled from multiple sources, including the Weather Channel, Foreca, WDT,, AccuWeather, Weather2Travel, and (the latter two are for determining when it's best to visit a particular location, with information such as sea temperature).

The world weather map is pretty cool, showing a snapshot of weather throughout... well, the world:

In the photo above, you'll notice black dots on the cities that are displaying weather data, and blue dots on others. Every few seconds, the weather data shifts between the blue dots and the black dots. Clicking any city brings up the city-specific weather page just like the one we saw above in my hometown of Framingham, MA. You can also click a continent to display data in more cities:

Enlarge / Helpfully labeled "Africa" for America's geography-challenged population.

Back to the home page, scrolling to the right brings up a series of maps with different data, and travel-specific information:

Enlarge / For travelers, a handy map showing weather impact at airports.

The airport map is a US-only thing. If your home base is somewhere in Europe, you won't see that level of detail. Even in Canada, the airport data and travel-related weather alerts aren't available.

If you scroll further to the right on the home screen, you'll see a graph charting the weather over the past 12 months, with the option to look at temperature, rainfall, or the number of snow days.

Enlarge / Historical data, and a Windows Phone ad all the way over to the right.

Like the other Bing apps, Weather doesn't provide any popup notifications. That's fine with me, but some people like alerts for severe weather events, I guess. The live tile always shows the current weather, and I think that's enough. Bing Weather: it won't change your life, but it's a good app.

Bing Sports: Your second screen during the big game

As a huuuugggeee sports fan (go Celtics!), I had high hopes for the Bing Sports app, and they were (mostly) met. The general layout is more attractive than any other sports app for tablets I've used. The tile-based layout of top sports stories provides a nice entry point into the sports news of the day:

Scrolling a bit further to the right, you'll find a list of videos and slideshows. These aren't annoying slideshows—they feature top-notch sports photography, the best photos of the week.

If you want a "second screen" during the game, you can follow along with the live score app. It's nothing special, though—it's actually just the Fox Sports website displayed in an in-app browser. It can automatically refresh every 30, 60, or 90 seconds, but content doesn't update dynamically:

No sports app is complete without customization. You have to be able to choose what teams and sports to follow. The individual team pages are nice, showing you top news stories, stats, and the team's record and schedule. Unfortunately, the team pages don't show the full standings—you have to look at the league pages for that.

The favorite teams page itself is a missed opportunity. You get a live tile with some information for each team, but there's a lot of wasted space:

Enlarge / For the diehard fans: Barcelona's correct record is 7-1-0 (seven wins and a draw).

That space on the right, I think, should be used to show schedules, scores, stories, stats, etc., making it a one-screen hub to follow your favorite teams. I suppose you can fill up the space by adding more favorite teams, but most people only care about a handful.

Another disappointment is that the list of sports leagues is really thin:

Bing Sports has the top US professional sports, but no college sports, and no tennis. I know some Ars staffers who might be disappointed by the lack of rugby, or the inclusion of only one auto racing circuit. Personally, I'm stumped by the choices for soccer (or football, or fútbol, if you prefer). Many of the top national leagues are represented, but the UEFA Champions League, probably the most famous club tournament in the world, isn't. That means if you select FC Barcelona as your favorite soccer team, you'll only see it's Spanish "La Liga" games, and not its contests in the European championship. There's also no World Cup qualifying, or international sporting events in general.

Bing Sports is a fun app to use; there just isn't enough of it.

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