TempusLocuti

TempusLocuti is a very simple app.

It’s primary purpose is to provide current time information to you on the quarter hour, without having to haul out, turn on and look at your iPhone/iPod.

Alas, it can currently only tell you the time when your device is on and TempusLocuti is active. This is because to tell you the time when the device is sleeping in your pocket, the use of a specific, very simple iOS API is required. Alack, this API is restricted to VOIP applications only. Thus, this functionality is currently disabled. Hopefully, at some point this simple API will be permitted to other allowed background services applications, such as TempusLocuti, at which time this feature will just start working.

Soooooo, anyway...

Currently, TempusLocuti has two built-in voices, Standard Male (loud) and Quite Male (softer). Optionally, rather than have it speak on the quarter hour as well as on the hour, you can ask it to simply ding once on the quarter hour, twice on the half and 3 times on the 3/4 hour. It is a very nice ding (ding-ding, ding-ding-ding).

The speaking Timer lets you set a time in minutes and seconds which you wish it to count down from. It will speak on the minute (if any), at the 50 and 20 second marks and then count down each second from 10 seconds. It can only do this from the foreground, alas. Personally, I use it when cooking on the grill so I don’t have to keep checking the time, looking up from my book, opening eyes, etc. Works great for that. Not really accurate enough for science or engineering work, however.

Here are TempusLocuti’s

screens: