Pointing North

While
the developed world has been less than successful (a slight
understatement, perhaps?) at exporting democracy to
the Middle East in a reasonable manner, that doesn’t mean they can’t
have its flip-side, the free market! There was a news piece a couple of
months back on how Africa was the first continent to achieve the
sort-of commendable feat of having more mobile lines than land lines.
And now, LG are selling a special phone for Muslims, the F7100 Qiblah
. It can point the faithful in the direction of Mecca at prayer-time.
Which is actually very cool, although slightly tacky at the same time…. Sadly, it’s not
going to be on sale in Europe – I quite like the idea of having a
compass for navigation, in a very very very 16th-century-pirate kind of
retro way… There’s more from info here, and the press release from LG here. Pic from LG. [via Engadget]