I proud­ly present you De­bateTimer, a MIDP ap­pli­ca­tion for your Ja­va-ca­pa­ble mo­bile phone that sup­ports you in tim­ing a for­mal de­bate. After en­ter­ing a speech time, a timer is start­ed which will give a num­ber of sig­nals:

• Start of ques­tion­ing phase. Oc­curs not at all on speech­es of one minute or less, at 30 sec­onds on speech­es of two min­utes or less, and at 60 sec­onds on all oth­er speech­es.
• End of ques­tion­ing phase. Oc­curs not at all on speech­es of one minute or less, 30 sec­onds be­fore the end of speech sig­nal on speech­es of four min­utes or less, and 60 sec­onds be­fore the end of speech sig­nal on all oth­er speech­es.
• End of speech sig­nal. For clar­i­ty, this sig­nal is giv­en twice in short suc­ces­sion.
• Over­time beeps. 15 sec­onds af­ter the end of the speech, the soft­ware starts beep­ing re­peat­ed­ly.

For tim­ing com­pet­i­tive de­bates in Bri­tish Par­lia­ment Style or Open Par­lia­ment De­bate, the us­age is ex­treme­ly sim­ple: En­ter the length of speech and hit the Start but­ton. Every time your mo­bile beeps, ham­mer. Divert con­cen­tra­tion to the re­al tasks at hand.

JAD file for De­bateTimer

JAR file for De­bateTimer

Source code