| Swatch Internet Time |
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DESCRIPTION Instead of Hour s and Minute s, the 24 hour day is divided up into 1000 parts called ".beats", each .beat being 1 minute and 26.4 Second s, and equal to the Decimal Minute introduced after the French Revolution . There are no time zones; instead, the new scale of Biel Mean Time (BMT) is used, based on the company's headquarters in Biel, Switzerland . Despite the name, BMT does not refer to mean Solar Time at the Biel Meridian , but is equivalent to Central European Time , or UTC +1. However, unlike the regular time in most countries, Swatch does not have Daylight Saving Time and thus it matches the central European countries during winter and the United Kingdom during summer. If it were to use UTC, it would match the clock time in the UK during winter, but would not match any important territories during summer. The most distinctive aspect of Swatch Internet Time is its s, although the Swatch Website displays the Gregorian Calendar date in the order Day - Month - Year , separated by periods and prefixed by the letter ''d'' (d31.01.99). Like UTC, Internet time is the same throughout the world. For example, when the time is 875 .beats, or @875, in New York , it is also @875 in Tokyo . : With its decimal character the time system is supposed to be more attractive for some people than the traditional Babylon ian system of time units (24 hours of 60 minutes of 60 seconds). For example, if one learned some event took 5500 .beats to complete, it would be easy to see that it happened over five and a half days. But if one learned that an event took place over 132 hours, its duration in days would be less obvious. On the other hand, the system has been met with much criticism. CRITICISMS Swatch Internet Time appears to be more of a commercial marketing attempt than a usable system. Although there are advantages, the system has major drawbacks:
Most Internet standards actually use either local Civil Time with a time zone indicator, or the global UTC time standard. HISTORY The timescale was announced on October 23 , 1998 , in a ceremony attended by Nicolas G. Hayek , President and CEO of the Swatch Group, G.N. Hayek, President of Swatch Ltd., and Nicholas Negroponte , founder and ex-director of the MIT Media Lab . During 1999, Swatch produced several models of watch that displayed Swatch Internet Time as well as standard time, and even convinced a few websites (such as CNN.com ) to use the new format. The clock applet in the GNOME desktop can be set to display time in this manner. It is also used as a time reference on ICQ , and the online Role-playing Game '' Phantasy Star Online '' has used it since its launch on the Sega Dreamcast in 2000 to try to facilitate cross-continent gaming (as the game allowed Japanese, American and European players to mingle on the same servers). In March , 2001 , Ericsson released the T20e, a Mobile Phone which gave the user the option of displaying Internet Time. No further Ericsson phones had this feature. Outside these areas, though, it appears to be infrequently used. SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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