Sonar Ruler is the latest and greatest of measuring tools to come this way to the iPhone. Instead of marking a start and end point or displaying a ruler on the screen, this app utilizes a much more scientific approach to measuring distance. It sends out clicks that bounce off the wall and then are picked up my the iPhone's mic. This then is interpreted by an algorithm and the distance between the two is calculated.

This method is much like how bats navigate in the night. This almost immediately caught my attention as I am a sucker for anything scientific. Eager to put the app to the test, I started it up and brought my handy tape measure to compare results. What I ended up finding out is that the app does a very decent job at estimating the distance between the objects. My mic has seen better days having shared a pocket with melted candy (oops) and so I can forgive the small difference in reading as my iPhone is not considered new. For good measure I had our community manager Brian O'Neal try it out and his results were very reasonable as well. The app almost consistently gave me results within 3 inches of the actual distance and sometimes was ridiculously close. You need to set it up properly with even the temperature of the room playing a factor in how the information will be received.

Overall, this app is the closest thing to an amazing measuring tool that we have come. It's priced pretty cheap in the app store, so check it out and see if you can't get even better results than I did.