Filed under: iPhone, First Look
TUAW Exclusive: Darkness 2.0 First Look
Bjango, developer of the awesome iStat for iPhone, is readying the next version of one of its most successful iPhone apps, Darkness (iTunes link). TUAW got a chance to play with Darkness 2.0, which should be hitting the App Store in the next couple of days, and we explored what is new and improved.Darkness is a world clock on steroids. Not only does it give you the current time for pretty much any city in the world, it also lets you know what time the sun rises and sets, alongside other specific information such as the the phase of the moon.
Darkness 2.0 is a complete rewrite, sporting a new interface and some enhanced features. For photographers, Darkness is a really, really useful tool because it tells you where the sun or moon will be at any given time. you can also find out the exact time that solar noon (the time of day when the sun appears its highest) will occur in your location, so you can help plan for the best time to take certain shots.
World Clock
Darkness offers up a nice way to quickly glance at what time it is in various places all over the world. Sure, the built in World Clock can do the same thing, but Darkness gives you more accessible information (the day for instance) and can access your current location, which is great if you happen to be traveling across timezones.
You can also easily choose to view the time in military or 12-hour intervals, and tell at a glance at what time sunrise and sunset is in any given city. You can add your own city from Bjango's large database (more than 8500 cities) or you can enter in your exact coordinates if you live off the grid or something.
Gallery: Darkness 2.0 First Look
Moon Phases
I remember having to do those stupid moon-phase charts in middle school and high school, tracking what the phase of the moon was each night and then drawing a corresponding picture to go along in the little chart. It was one of those tasks that just struck me as insipid and without merit, so I generally either cheated out of the Farmer's Almanac or the weather section in the local paper. Today's kids have it even easier -- they can use Darkness to do their moon charts.
Darkness will show you the current phase of the moon and the next 8 phases. So at a glance, you can see the next full moon, new moon and quarter moon dates. You can also select a date in the past or present and notate the moon data (and sunrise/sunset data) for those dates as well.
And while it probably isn't a bad idea for kids to actually learn what the different phases of the moon are and why they behave the way they do, it's pretty nice to have the information handy as an adult.
Back to the Future
The aspect of Darkness 2.0 that I had the most fun with was the ability to check out sun and moon information for dates in the future. I input November 12, 2009 and set the time to 10:35 AM (my 27th birthday) and I was able to view exactly where the sun would be and what phase the moon will be in in approximately 7 months. Neat. You can go back in time too, though only through the current calendar year. Again, this is really, really useful for cheating on that stupid geography homework.
All in all, Darkness 2.0 sports a great interface, some genuinely useful information about sun and moon positions and offers up a great world clock. The new version is a big step-up from version 1.2 and should really appeal to photographers, amateur astronomers and people who make lots of international calls. It's also a great
Darkness 2.0 (iTunes link) is $1.99US and should be available in the App Store later this week.
Check out the gallery to get a glimpse of the app in action!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Brian E said 5:07PM on 4-06-2009
Will the upgrade be free for existing customers?
Reply
lykoz said 6:26PM on 4-06-2009
Yes its free upgrade
Marc Edwards said 7:18PM on 4-06-2009
Just double confirming that the Darkness 2.0 upgrade will be free for anyone who's purchased Darkness (any version). We don't plan to charge for upgrades to many of our iPhone apps... in fact, we might end up never charging for any.
Full info is online now: http://bjango.com/apps/darkness/
Brian E said 9:57PM on 4-06-2009
Thanks Mark, I'm glad to hear that. The new features look really nice!
Mistahtea said 5:30PM on 4-06-2009
I refuse to recognize any system of notation that utilizes candy corn.......lines must be drawn!
Reply
Galley said 5:37PM on 4-06-2009
Looks to be an excellent upgrade!
Reply
baker.thea said 2:05AM on 4-09-2009
Is it wrong that an app made me purr?
Reply
Ksilebo said 7:30PM on 4-06-2009
Would you be able to compare it to VelaClock, which does quite a bit of the same?
Reply
Michael Sternberg said 9:37PM on 4-06-2009
VelaClock in my opinion has a much better way of organizing and presenting the information; in a glance, you can see daytime and twilight times for more cities. The latest version added a nice time stepping feature.
In Darkness, having the moon phase amid locations is just confusing. The "set" icons are silly. There's also a bug: in picture 21, the illumination is 19%, not 0.19%.
VelaClock does not give illumination and distance (for that, use Starmap), but it does present things about time very well, very compact, and at high usability.
Marc Edwards said 10:11PM on 4-06-2009
"In Darkness, having the moon phase amid locations is just confusing"
We've had a lot of emails regarding moon info and how it relates to the city or current location. A lot of users didn't realise that the moon phase was the same, no matter where it was viewed from, but the moonrise and moonset is different for different cities. This is why we put all the moon specific data under a moon item and the city specific data under city items.
We're also showing a lot more info, so trying to fit everything in one page seemed a little crazy. The new UI will allow us to add some really cool extra info in the future AND have a good place for it to be located. The large map and flags are an example of something we couldn't have easily done with the old UI.
"There's also a bug: in picture 21, the illumination is 19%, not 0.19%."
Well spotted. We already have a fix for this completed. 2.01 will be submitted a couple of days after 2.0 is released.
Thanks for the feedback.
Reply
Marc Edwards said 10:18PM on 4-06-2009
"This is why we put all the moon specific data under a moon item and the city specific data under city items."
I forgot to mention that keeping the moon phase info in one place also lets people who are more interested in the world clock side of things remove it.
We welcome any comments people have though.
(The best places to get in contact with us are http://twitter.com/bjango and http://bjango.com/contact/ .)