Waiting for Lunchtime

Compass for mobile phones

Wow, finally a J2ME application that (a) is useful and (b) works!

Compass is the apt name for a small Java application that sits on your mobile phone and enables you to find out where North is. You simply tell it where in the world you are (enter latitude and longitude coordinates if you have them, or the nearest airport code if you don't), and it displays a graphical image of the sun and/or moon, along with a pointer to north. So you merely align your phone so that the images of the sun and moon match the real objects, and away you go :)

OK, so there are a couple of minor problems. There are times when neither sun nor moon are visible, and potentially you could be somewhere many hundreds of kilometres from the nearest airport with no idea what your lat/long is. In which case you'd probably be better off investing in a decent GPS unit. And some of Ray Mears' survival skills, too!

posted by Iain @ 06:02