It is a...flashlight.

Easy scenario to describe: I enter the bedroom and it’s pitch dark. I feel my way around the room to locate the bed. It doesn’t really tend to move around a lot but various other things do, so I bump into my guitars or a pile of books or other junk I happen to store in our bedroom.

It may not be an ereader application, but mighty useful for people like me who tend to go to bed a bit late (particularly when I go to bed after my wife has fallen asleep, which is, uhm, too often).

A nifty iPod app to the rescue.

Usually the only think I carry when I go to bed is my iPod. Just turning it on does provide some light, but I rarely keep it at maximum backlight so it’s not very useful.

But to my delight, searching the App Store revealed a score of basic flashlight applications. The one I picked is free and does exactly what I need.

The app is called “Flashlight” (duh!) and is written by John Haney. It simply shows a full screen of the same color of your choosing (white, green, red, cyan etc). It won’t let you change the brightness without going into the iPod preferences, but as far as I have been able to figure out this is a shortcoming in the current Firmware version and not something the developer can do. I know some flashlight apps offer this but I think this requires a jailbreaked iPhone and thirdparty apps.

But it’s a simple app which helps me get to bed at night without having to turn on any lights or do anything except hit the Flashlight icon. And after I hit the sack I can get on with my ereading. Brilliant!