Re: Smartphones and dialing

[Tom Egan]

A relative showed me his iPhone with an app called "Sun Seeker."  (Obtainable from the Apple app store. Works for iPhones and iPads. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sun-seeker-3d-augmented-reality/id330247123?mt=8)  Some of its capabilities may be useful to a dialist: Held vertically, it displays the instantaneous azimuth and altitude of the device. I held it against a wall and it gave me the azimuth. No sun was needed to find the declination of the wall. It determined the declination to be 59 deg. Using a sun-based technique, I had earlier determined it to be 60 deg. I don't know how accurate my measurements are, though. The description on the web page is: "Provides a FLAT VIEW COMPASS and an AUGMENTED REALITY CAMERA 3-D VIEW showing the solar path, its hour intervals, its winter and summer solstice paths, rise and set times and more and a MAP VIEW showing solar direction for each daylight hour." Comments from users: PRO:"Great app for locating and, perhaps more importantly, predicting the sun's location and elevation. As a videographer I use it almost every day. It helps light interiors that have natural light windows, predict shadow direction, etc. Really well thought out app.  The app stopped working after iOS5 came out but a phone reboot (hold home & power buttons until the Apple logo appears) solved the problem. " CON: "As a DP I relied on this app. Did the update & now it doesn't locate sun position properly/accurately. Developer should have left it alone. Do not buy, it is now worthless! Fix problem please!" "This was the first app I bought when I bought my iphone 4. I work as a grip/electric and I found it was extraordinarily helpful in predicting the position of the sun and placing frames of diff once and only once where long ago we would use fingers and chalk to make those calculations (unless you had an inclinometer, compass and GPS). Suddenly in the last month or so the app has failed. Miserably. It won't find the precision position of the sun anymore (why is it called "Sunseeker" if it can't find the sun?!) and even stranger it will only work if my phone is held upright and not horizontally. Even then it is very "jumpy' in its readings. Needless to say I'm disappointed. I've contacted the developer once already and never heard a thing back and I just did again, as well as delete and reinstalled the app twice. Still nothing. Don't waste your money until you hear back from me. I'll repost when (or better yet, if) the developers fix these bugs. Hey developers, get your heads out of your a**es. Thanks." There is another app I've seen (but don't know the name) that displays and names stars and planets in the part of the sky you point the phone at.  Even during the day. Cheers, Tom On 9/28/2011 7:46 AM, J. Tallman wrote: Hello All,   I am researching new smartphones and getting ready to pick one and embark on a new contract, and I wanted to ask you all if there are any good “apps” that I should know about before making the choice between Iphone or Android. I have had a Windows Mobile device for years, but they typically don’t have access to all the “apps” that I keep hearing about – the trouble is, when picking a phone it is difficult to really research all of the software realities that become apparent only after the contract is signed and the new phone is out of the box.   I know that some of you have Iphones, and I’m sure some of you have Android phones as well. Really, I just need a good calculator and email possibilities on a cellphone device that can sync with Outlook on my Windows PC…but occasionally I do dialing work in the field and it sure would be nice to have a device that can help with field measurements, etc. I managed to figure out how to run Dialist Companion on my present Windows Mobile device by using a DOS Emulator program, but it was difficult and I am hoping that now there are other possibilities. I would love to hear some of your experiences if it would be helpful to me in choosing which way to go.   If any of you have any favorite “apps” advice or suggestions, could you please let me know?     Thanks,   Jim Tallman www.artisanindustrials.com jtall...@artisanindustrials.com 513-253-5497   --------------------------------------------------- https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial

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