Noront unveils a free, downloadable application for the Apple iPhone that allows users to calculate what a drill hole or resource estimate is actually worth.

Canada has so many junior mining companies that separating oneself from the pack is not easy. But Noront Resources Ltd. has found one way to do it: Create a device that investors can use to compare each one.

At the PDAC conference, Toronto-based Noront is unveiling the Noront Universal Mining Application, or NUMA. It is a free, downloadable application for the Apple iPhone that allows users to calculate what a drill hole or resource estimate is actually worth.

It could be a useful tool on the conference floor for anyone trying to distinguish the good stories from the not-so-good ones.

"To be quite frank, it's meant to get Noront's name out there, to do something that hasn't been done in the industry before," chief executive Wes Hanson says.

"It's a quick and easy way to do an initial valuation of the information you see at PDAC, to compare project against project and drill hole against drill hole."

To develop NUMA, Noront teamed up with an application developer called Apex Imaging.

Noront provided the concept, explained how to research metal prices at Web sites such as Kitco and the London Metals Exchange, and offered up all the mathematical calculations.

The result looks a little bit like the iPhone alarm clock, and it works almost that easily. The user simply plugs the metals and the grades from a drill hole into the application, and it will calculate what the hole is worth per tonne in the ground.

It is a very simple starting point to evaluate a project, but Noront hopes to eventually do more with it.

"In the old days, there was a rule-of-thumb handbook that geologists and engineers treated as gospel when they were evaluating mineral projects.

"My vision is to eventually boil that handbook down into an Apple app and exploit it using iPhones and modern technology," Mr. Hanson says.

Noront made a name for itself in 2007 with the discovery of the so-called "Ring of Fire" in northern Ontario, an area that is proving to be full of high-grade base metal and chromite deposits.

The application is intended to show that the company is also a technological leader as it tries to avoid being lumped in with its junior mining peers.

Along with the NUMA, Noront is launching the "Ring of Fire Viewer" at PDAC, a web-based tool that allows investors to view the company's progress at its Eagle's Nest discovery in the Ring of Fire through 3D models and other multimedia.

The company is also introducing a third technology, but says investors will just have to visit its booth to see what it is all about.

It is loosely described as "CSI meets mining geology."

"I'm about as technologically savvy as they come, but this one blew even me away," Mr. Hanson says.

pkoven@nationalpost.com