Haptic clock tells you the time in vibrations 13 Jun 2007

Haptic Clock is a free program for Java-enabled phones that presents the time as a series of vibrations, allowing you to keep your mobile concealed in your pocket.

Could be useful if you've stopped wearing a watch and are sick of pulling your phone out every time you want to check the time. Or if you need to check the time, but don't want the people you're with to think they are boring you (e.g. when you're in a meeting). Or if you have a visual impairment that means you can't read your phone's built-in clock...

How does it work? Gizmodo explains:

"Simply reach in your pocket and hit the 5 key to get it to tell you the time...Long vibrations are the number of hours of the current time on a 12 hour clock, so 6pm and 6am are both 6 vibrations. The shorter vibrations are the number of minutes divided by 5. So 4 vibrations is 20 minutes and 7 vibrations is 35 minutes. Example: (3) long vibrations and (6) short vibrations means it's 3:30. Just in case you do want to see the time, the screen displays the time with tick marks for hours, minutes and seconds."