Introduction
It's getting more and more popular on the Internet: Even the CNN site is using it. Yes, we are talking about beats... the new Internet time standard, invented by watch maker Swatch. According to Swatch, the Swatch Beat means no time zones and no geographical borders. Let me first explain how it works.
From time to beats...
One Swatch Beat is 1 minute and 26.4 seconds in standard time. Biel Mean Time, or BMT, is the universal reference for the time in Beats. @000 Beats is midnight at BMT (Central European Wintertime). Now that you know all this, it's easy to convert between standard time, and time in Swatch Beats, or simply Beats.
On the homepage of Swatch, 3 applets are available for your homepage, so you can display the time in Beats to your visitors. There's also a special version for companies and webmasters, which can take the current time of your web-server and then calculate the time in Beats. Swatch also has an online converter on their site.
Last but not least you can also download a small application for your computer, to watch the time in Beats. You can find those on the Swatch homepage aswell. They are available for the Macintosh, PC, Unix and Palmpilot.
How to calculate Beats
Probably the best way to convert standard time to Beats, is by first calculating the time in seconds. A good formula to calculate standard time to Internet time is: hours(in BMT)*60*60 + minutes*60 + seconds. Once you've calculated this (let's call the total of the previous calculation calculated_total): calculated_total/86.4. That should give you the time in Beats. Just to make sure, compare it with the time on the Swatch site.
Beats fan?
Are you a Beats fan? Then you're not alone! Ryan Thiessen has built a Swatch Internet time Fan page. Besides a lot of information there's a directory of sites that use the Swatch Internet time, and much more.
So, what does this mean?
I believe most people will keep on using the normal standard time, unless suddenly everybody starts using time in Beats. I think time in Beats is very useful for the Internet, but it doesn't only have advantages. @400 Beats maybe day time for one part of the world, but it may be night for the other part of the world. Since time in Beats doesn't say anything about the part-of-the-day situation in a certain part of the world, it could be very confusing. But, for specific Internet usage, I think it's great.
If you would like to know more about Swatch Beats, here's a list of other sites/pages for more information about Internet time:
