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Home / Technology

Peter Sinclair: Counting the beat

30 Jun, 2000 03:24 AM5 mins to read

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Scientifically, time is as sexy as space these days. But wormholes, time-travel and Stephen Hawking aside, for us it continues to do what it's always done: fly. The hourglass is a feature of most operating systems.

Like Andrew Marvell [www.bartleby.com/101/357.html], at our backs we still hear time's winged chariot, but how do you measure timeless cyberspace? In the void, no clocks strike the hour -- at least, no hour that we all agree on.

Dear old GMT, with all the other time-zones dangling from it in a tangle of pluses and minuses, can't really cope with the nightless, dayless continuum of the Web -- although if you find it hard to let go of the past, visit www.mabry.com/time for TimeControl, useful if you need spot-on GMT for time-sensitive medical or financial records].

No, new ages demand new time. The list of revised calendars for recording it and devices for measuring its passing stretches back to Ptolemy. As we move into a world without time-zones or geographical boundaries, perhaps GMT is doomed to join the sundial. So long, Big Ben ...


Paradigm-shifters on the Web think so, anyway, chief among the enthusiasts for Internet Time being [wouldn't you know?] Swatch at www.swatch.com.

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Its system involves dividing the day into 1000 beats of 86.4 seconds each, instead of 24 hours, to create Biel Meridian Time [BMT] - the meridian itself is conveniently located directly above Swatch headquarters in the Swiss town of Biel. At midnight BMT [GMT+1], Internet Time is @000.

Already marketing a $US70 BMT watch in Europe, Swatch will introduce it to America this month.

If you feel like surfing what may be the wave of the future, join 45,000 others in downloading free Internet Time software from Swatch's site. You can also record a message for broadcast from Beatnik, a promotional satellite the watchmaker launches next month, godfathered by Nicholas Negroponte.

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But if you prefer not to give Swatch a free billboard on your desktop, go for @SIT [Show Internet Time], a freeware utility which displays alongside GMT in your taskbar. Download from www.lss.com.au/lss/windows/sit/sit.htm.


More advanced is CreativEngine's @Time [www.attime.com], now in 2.0 beta, which includes all @SIT's features plus alarms, a buddy-list, cool customisable skins just like Winamp's, and counts the centibeats as well [that's 0.864 seconds, technophobes].


BMT advantages: standardises international flight-times, events, too, like the Olympics; easier worldwide project collaboration; base-10 system allows simpler calculation; structures the seamless Internet life of chat-rooms, telephony, messaging and webcasts.


Disadvantages: GMT, globally recognised already, would be a more sensible meridian; Swatch branding will discourage other watchmakers from adopting Internet Time.

Discourage them? They'll try to kill it.

Purists, of course, may prefer to stay in tune with the cosmos, the tiny but eternal pulse of the atom. Best for Windows users is possibly AtomTime98 [www.atomtime.com], an app that connects to the Atomic Clock time-server in Boulder, Colorado, fetches the current value and automatically updates your computer [synchronization software for all platforms, including Java and even Amiga, is at www.eecis.udel.edu/~ntp/software.html.


The hopelessly unevolved will find instructions for making an Egyptian water-clock as a class project at www.sd68.nanaimo.bc.ca/schools/coal/at/egyptian.htm. a sundial, the Rolex of 300BC, at www.astro.indiana.edu/~rberring/sundial.html.

One world, one time -- it's a beautiful idea, but then so was Esperanto. Such sweeping idealism generally comes to grief when it tries to cut across the stubborn illogic of human nature.

But I, for one, refuse to be left behind. As I write this the centibeats are marching steadily in the taskbar... good God, is that the time? @951 already! Got to go, see you next week.

Bookmarks

Newest: netclassifieds

Sound the trumpets! - and in this case we're blowing our own, as Herald classifieds hit the Web. New Zealand's largest [over 20,000] listings become searchable and interactive - whether you're Desperate and Dateless, or just need a car/job/cleaning-lady, the new E-Alert service matches your need to our database and emails you when it shows. Updated daily, appearing simultaneously with the print edition, each section links to useful related stuff - Real Estate to mortgage reports and rates information, for example; Employment to Morgan & Banks' full-featured Resume Builder. The ultimate search for everything under the sun.

Advisory: find your needle in our haystack...

www.netclassifieds.co.nz

Jauntiest: St. Patrick's Festival `99

Break out the shamrock - tomorrow is St Patrick's Day, one of the two great Celtic revels [Halloween is the other]. Dublin parade coverage, plus a recorded address from the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, a Festival Quiz [win return flights to Dublin with Aer Lingus], and tongue-tangling Gaelic lessons in RealAudio - useful common phrases include Is laoch eisean [He is a warrior]; Is gadai ise [She is a thief]; Is cimi iadsan [They are prisoners]. Saintly articles range from Brian Fallon's hushed treatise on "The Power of the Patrick Principle" to Louise East's debunking "Life Without Patrick" [What did he ever do for us?].

Advisory: well, Louise, without him Eire would be stuck with St. Vitus for a patron saint.

www.ireland.com/events/st.patricks

Comments: petersinclair@email.com

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