My Currency Convertilizer

I've been travelling a bit over the last few years and shopping with a different currency is always a challenge. The trip I'm on as I write this has been particularly challenging.

India - the Rupee is 34 to 1 Australian Dollar. Unless you have the mind of Steven Hawking and the composure of a Miss Universe contestent, you will be taken for a ride, and I'm not speaking of a rickshaw.

The trouble is, when dealing in Rupees, the numbers become very large and mental arithmatic is almost impossible, especially given you're probably being spoken to by several people at once in as many languages, and quite possibly you are fighting the urge to let yesterday's curry pass directly down your trouser leg. With all that going on, by the time you figure out just how much you should be paying for that pair of lovely handmade silver earings, you've agreed to buy them. A) because you want everyone to be quiet and B) because you desperatly need to get to the toilet.

Enter my Currency Convertilizer. I use a Nokia E61 mobile phone. It has Flash-lite player installed. Only version 1.1 mind you, but it does the job. So, inspired by a lovely girl who used to book my travel and provide me with currency conversion cards, I took it upon myself to build a Flash version which I could use on my phone. Its very simple and some of the limitations of Flash-lite 1.1 are a bit annoying, but I've been using it for a few days and its really helpful.

Things that bug me:

• Integer-only rounding - I cannot specify to round only to 2 decimals. Rounding only occurs to the integer, so I've left rounding off, which of course looks pretty ugly, but you quickly get used to only reading the numbers you're interested in.
• No persistant memory - Everytime I start the app, I have to 'set it up'. Doesn't take long, but still, it would be nice to save the settings for a trip. No can do.
• No shortcut - My phone only allows main screen shortcuts to fully fledged applications. So, I can create a shortcut to Flash itself, but not to my Flash application. This means that there's several button pushes required to get to it. Once I have it opened I can leave it there, but
  inevitably, it will end up being closed at some point for some reason.

So, feel free to give it a go. It will display nicely on any 320 x 240 phone with Flash-Lite 1.1 or higher. You can click the link below to try it in your browser, or right-click to save it.

Features:

• Convert any currency to preset common spending amounts
• Label the foreign currency
• multiply conversion up or down by factor of 10
• help screen