Going International: Daily Planet Review

The pervasiveness of cell phone use seems to be directly correlated to rising trends toward internationalism and globalization. Along with this is the need to be aware of what is happening globally because the most casual business and personal actions are now engaged across the entire planet instead of just locally. To do this we need to match our own organization and schedule with the time patterns of other parts of the world. The Daily Planet application for the iPhone is perfectly curtailed to just this need.

The Daily Planet is a basic application that exists in only one screen. When you open it the application first adjusts to your GPS location and then provides you with two circular informational templates. The top provides the local time as well as the time for all the different global time codes. It does this by having a standard local clock in the center that then matches up with the outer ring. This outer ring then addresses international locations from London to Auckland. The bottom circle is a planetary image that shows the night to day line wherever it is at that particular point in the day.

The main selling point of this application is its absolute simplicity. When you tap on the screen yellow markers identify each informational category in the display, including where the GMT time is, the local time, and the local date. Once you do this a couple times you will be able to quickly see the information you are looking for without any reference. You do not need to check anything in detail or browse through extensive menu systems to find out what the software offers.

This simplicity also works against it to a degree. There are dozens of programs offered that will do this kind of calculation and more. If you need a large amount of information about global concerns then you are going to have to get more than just Daily Planet. You may want to try full-service scheduling software instead.

Like many of the iTunes provided applications it is free, so you really are not losing much if you try it. Luckily it is advertisement free, which really clears out the clutter. Try it out, but it is much more for casual amusement than serious reference. Six and a half out of ten stars.