The iPhone app that helped save Algerian hostages in the desert

Make fun of iPhone 5s and their terrible maps all you want, but the next time you're in an Algerian hostage situation, running for your life 20 miles across the desert with almost no water and no real idea where to go, remember that Apple phone's native Compass app just may save your life. That's one of the things we gleaned from The New York Times's interview with Liviu Floria, one of the gas workers trapped at BP's facility last week:

After nearly two days of hiding from the hostage-takers, Mr. Floria and seven others decided their only chance at survival would come from climbing the fence and running away. They left around 2 a.m. for what became a harrowing desert trek, guided only by the flickering flame atop a gas well in the distance and a compass application on Mr. Floria’s iPhone.

It's certainly not your average desert survival story — water, mirage, the stars as your guide — but these days you really can use an iPhone in the middle of nowhere?

Read more at The Atlantic Wire.