While searching through some perl examples, I came across a conversion utility for Internet Time. Apparently, Swatch (the old goofy watch manufacturer, popular in the 80s) has come up with a new time standard they're calling Internet Time. Basically, they're removing all time zones but 1 which will be the International reference for Internet Time -- the Beil Mean Time (headquarters for Swatch International). The days are divided into 1000 time increments they're calling .beats. Each .beat is equivalent to 1 minute 26.4 seconds. The time is then stated in .beats with a unique syntax. For example, 3:30pm August 8th would be written

@897
09.08.2002

However, if you were to convert @897 09.08.2002 into standard time, it would be:

Sometime between 15:31:40 and 15:33:07 August 8th, 2002.

I think a new way to tell time would be kind of cool, but this seems woefully inaccurate. It would be nice to know that the time is the same everywhere, and there would be no need to convert anymore between time zones. Maybe they're planning to further subdivide that 1 minute 26.4 seconds into an additional 100 or 1000 increments so we could have time like:

@897.3421
09.08.2002

That might be a bit better. I dunno...Thought you all might get a kick out of it, anyway.

Here's the link to their project: http://swatch.com/fs_index.php?haupt=itime