I have to admit, I love weather applications. I thought the 5 blog weather widgets that John covered were very cool, and Tim's review of checking out weather radar using Google Earth was great. Today, I'd like to cover an innovative application that lets you view a real-time animated virtual weather "window" display. Sounds strange right? Once you start using it, you won't be able to stop.

If you're like me, you have the latest weather displayed on your phone, on your computer's desktop and maybe even on the sidebar of your blog. You check the weather before heading out to work and before heading back home, and you check it before heading out for the weekend camping trip. Usually, weather apps consist of little more than text featuring the latest temperature, barometric pressure readings and maybe a forecast. Wouldn't it be nice to have a virtual weather display that also gives you a graphical representation of what the weather outside looks like? This is exactly what YoWindow does.

Get a Glimpse of the Virtual World Outside Yo' Window

Whether you're in an office somewhere where there are no windows near you, or if you'd like to take a look at what the weather looks like somewhere else in the world - YoWindow transforms weather data into a visually rich experience. Installing YoWindow is quick and easy, and once you do you'll be able to see a virtual weather display - a virtual representation of the world outside. The weather is animated over a virtual default background image, or you can use a picture of your own house (or snap a photo outside your real window!)

When you first install and run the app, you can immediately set up your location. Once you select your country and city, the virtual weather window displays a scene that represents the weather in your part of the world.

In my case I'm using New York City. The YR.no servers were tricky when I attempted to change my location from here, so if you have problems you may need to go into Location -> Properties and manually enter the information or click to use your own weather station.

The scene itself is pretty cool - the plants sway in the wind and for the most part the creators tried to build an actual virtual world right outside your "window." When it snows in your real world, it snows outside. When it rains in your real world, you'll see it raining outside this virtual window. No more running over to your office window to see what the weather looks like - the creators of this software try to present a virtual display that's as close to reality as possible.

What's very cool is that you can also see what the weather looked like in the past, as well as what it's going to look like in the future. For example, when I click on Time -> Next Day, I get a glimpse of the sort of weather I can expect.

You can open up the calendar and click on any date that you'd like, and if there's a forecast available for that date - you'll see it graphically represented in your YoWindow virtual weather display. The YoWindow folks have every season and most weather events covered, including rain, snow, hail, fog and even a thunderstorm. You'll also see the various cloud patterns as well. The best feature of all is the fact that if you really don't want an image of the standard farm - just upload your own picture which will be used as the backdrop!

Just go into Location -> Landscape pictures and "Add..." and then you can select from any of your images. In my case, I recently took a great picture of the coast, so I selected one of those photos as my backdrop.

As you can see, the animated rain gets overlaid on top of the image of the ocean coast. It's very cool - and you can take a photo of any location that you like and use it as your backdrop. Best of all, you can also use YoWindow as your screensaver, on your Facebook account or on your blog. Anywhere you go - whether you're at home, at work, or online, now you can actually "see" the weather near you. So go ahead, add a virtual window to your online experience, so you can peek out the window and see what the weather looks like outside, no matter where you are.

Have you ever used YoWindow? What do you think? Do you know of any other cool weather applications like this? Share your opinions in the comments section below!