Appnoodle

So you’re at a BBQ or other outdoor night time based event with mixed male and female company and you’ve been wondering all night how to impress the foxy blonde chick/himbo quiet introverted type in the corner.

Here’s what to do: Sneak into the kitchen and download Google’s Sky Map app to your Android phone, fire it up and learn the location of a couple of constellations/planets/stars and you’ll be in the perfect position to strike up a romantic conversation with your chosen target.

A tad optimistic perhaps but in all seriousness Sky Map really is a great app if you’re interested in anything astronomical or sciencey. The clever bit is its use of the built-in compass and accelerometer together with the phone’s geo-positioning functionality. Using this combination the phone will display a  map of the same bit of the night sky you’re looking at providing easy identification of all those until-now unidentified heavenly bodies.

You can switch on and off various layers and even search for an object and the phone will show you where to look in the night sky to find it. Good, no?

Get it from the Android Market for free. We highly recommend you give this one a go.

A star? Nope, it's Saturn.

Jupiter - to the left a bit.

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