New Electronics for 2012

Your cell phone can already be used for everything from monitoring the baby sitter to carving a turkey (yep, there’s an app for that!), so why not use it as a chart plotter too? Using the Marine Charts app from EarthNC is one way you can do it, and the company has just announced a new version: Marine Charts 3.1. Marine Charts works on both iPhones and iPads (iOS 3.0 or later), and it essentially turns your device into a handheld chart plotter with all U.S. charts and offers integrated real-time weather data, including NOAA weather radar, route creation, and ports and services information. Sometimes, having so much info can be confusing — especially if you accidentally plotted waypoints and routes where you don’t need them. So, with the new 3.1 version, you can delete waypoints more easily during route creation (just give ’em a double tap); you can delete waypoints from the map screen; and you can delete waypoints, routes and maps in the options menus. Check it out at earthnc.com or go to Apple’s App Store. But this app isn’t cheap, and this capability will cost you $19.99.