Author: 24hourtime

Pical – iPhone 24 hour calendar plannning

Pical is an iPhone app that uses the 24 hour dial to help you plan your calendar.

Timezones 2048x2048

From the app’s description:

A visual calendar to help focus your day. Calendar events are displayed on a 24h clock dial, representing the entire day. Easily keep track of upcoming events with a time-remaining countdown display in the center of the dial.

Two calendar groups: The dial is split into two rings, so you can prioritize some calendars over others. For example, use the outer one for your own, and the inner one for your family members’ or colleagues’ schedules. Or just keep your work calendar and personal calendar separate.

Visualize time zones: Tap on the current time to pull up a visual display of customized time zones. Easily see what time of day it is for international friends and colleagues.

See when you’re free on any day of the month: A 24h dial is neatly split into four parts: morning, afternoon, evening, and night. In month view, you can see not only on which days you have appointments, but whether you’re free in the morning, or for lunch, or for dinner, on any particular day.

See where new events fit: When you add or edit an event, you’ll be shown when your other events are, so you can plan around them. Set appointment length instantly with our time slider.

A widget you won’t be able to live without: See your entire day on your home page, as soon as you unlock your phone, and how much time you have till your next event. Indispensable information, right at hand.

Link to the US App store

Dayview 2048x2048

As you can see from the screen shots, the execution of this concept is excellent throughout the application.

EventDuration

One interesting thing about this app is that it’s specifically targeted to ADHD sufferers – the app’s full name on the App Store is “PiCal – ADHD Clock + Calendar”. There are a couple of posts on this blog that highlight the utility of the simpler 24 hour design:

I do wonder whether this specific targeting to ADHD, good though it is, may deter others from benefiting from the improved usability of the 24 hour dial. I hope not.

One point to note: the app appears to be a subscription-only app: free to download, and then $3.49 per month, or $25 per year.

Visit Pical for more information.

World Time linear clock – London Piccadilly Circus tube station

On TV recently, an episode of Secrets of the London Underground looked at Picadilly Circus station, and there was a brief and rare glimpse of the unique World Time Today Linear Clock. This was built in about 1923-1925, designed by the architect Charles Holden, who also designed the rest of Picadilly Circus station and other London tube stations.

Picadilly Circus World Clock

The title at the bottom left is “The World, on Mercator’s projection”.
There are a few lights indicating some major cities.

Here are some pictures of the display and inner mechanism.

The time is displayed by a scrolling band with the Roman numbers from “0” to “XII” repeated once. It shows both GMT and Daylight Savings Time (Summer Time). The band scrolls left (west) at the same speed as the earth rotates.

Picadilly Circus World Clock

It probably gives a reasonably indication of the current times in various parts of the world, although, if you look at this much more detailed map of time zones from the wikipedia:

World Time Zones Map

the simple linearity obviously isn’t going to be very accurate.

Picadilly Circus World Clock

The numbers are shown in reverse for a few hours of the night, around midnight.

Picadilly Circus World Clock

I suspect that the band has to be at least twice as long as the width of the map, so that it can run around both in front of and behind the map. The band looks quite long in these pictures.

Picadilly Circus World Clock

Picadilly Circus World Clock

Picadilly Circus World Clock

Picadilly Circus World Clock

Here’s a moody photograph of Charles Holden:

Charles Holden

Holden sometimes used the pseudonym “The Owl”, because of his habit of working on his designs at night, sometimes until 3 or 4 o’clock. He was said to be a good craftsman and “good with his hands”, so I expect he played a large part in the design and manufacture of this clock, possibly in collaboration with building firm John Mowlem Ltd, with whom he worked on the development of Picadilly Circus station.

(The “Secrets of the London Underground” series was made by UKTV, which is owned by the BBC. I don’t know how you can watch this if you’re not in the UK.)

Forté watches

The fine people at the AAA Watch Club have released new versions of the Forté ALPHA Series of 24 Hour watches, with the big 43mm case.

24hralpha12s2 right side lay az

We’ve redesigned the watch face with bigger, brighter
numbers that are Superluminous. Specifically, every other
of the orange numbers is 20% bigger. Plus, all 24 hour
numbers are now Superluminous so that they glow brighter
and maintain their glow longer in dark lighting conditions.

And since the orange numbers are now a brighter orange they
are even easier to read during the day when they do not
glow and at night when they do!

At night, you’ll see the dials like this:

24hralpha24s2 super luminous dial az

You can choose to have 12, 00, or 24 at the top of the dial:

three forte watches

To find out more, visit the AAA Watch Club.

The Circa app and watching the Apple Watch

At their recent WorldWide Developers Conference, Apple again showed that they quite like the 24 hour watch face. Again, though, they’re not 100% convinced that the world is ready to tell the time on a 24-hour dial. This is as close as they’re going to get, this year at least:

Wwdc apple solar

It’s their new “solar face”, showing the position of the sun in the sky, (like a good old-fashioned medieval astronomical clock). They’ve also kept a 12-hour dial just to help you switch over to the 24 hour dial.

They already use the less error-prone design on current watches for selecting alarm times (when it’s important not to confuse 12am with 12pm:

IMG 0722

But if you want a more modern display suitable for your modern lifestyle, there’s a new iOS app that brings the 24 hour dial to your phone and your wrist. The app is called Circa, and it’s very well done.

Here’s the iPhone app:

Circa phone face

The coloured rings are the “office hours” for the time zone: you can change the names and hours for each one. You can add more cities easily. Notice the short white bars around the edge: these are the appointments taken automatically from your Calendar (if you give permission, of course!). The developer lives in Kiev, I think!

You can touch and move the single hour hand around, to find exact conversions between local and other time zones. You can also create new calendar events.

The Apple Watch app installs automatically when you install the iPhone app, and it’s more or less equivalent in functionality.

Circa watch face

It also lets you move the hour hand around (with your finger or using the digital crown) to see equivalent times in other zones. You can also add Circa as a complication on the other Apple watch faces.

The developer of Circa is Kostiantyn Zuiev.

(See also an earlier post looking at Alex Komarov’s development of an iPhone app.)

Svalbard Spring Collection 2019

For 2019, the prolific Svalbard Watch company have just added even more models to their already extensive range of limited edition collectible 24-hour watches:

svalbard-spring-2019

The 10 new models are:

Top Row: Barentsburg (AA31) Elementary (AA28) Meridian (AA25) Neoteric (AA30)

Second Row: Noonday (AA17E) Radiobolger (AA26) Regulator(AF14) Singly (AA29)

Third Row: Solfestuka (AA12) Utstrale (AA27)

New and previous models (and explanations of some of the names) are available at the official Svalbard tax-free store. You can use the code “24HOURTIME24” to get a 7% discount.

Magical clocks and fantastic dials, and where to find them

I don’t know how often the residents of the wizarding world of Harry Potter need to know the right time… Perhaps they have a spell – Tempo! or something? We know they have time-turners too, for traveling forwards and backwards through time, and it would surely be useful to have a portable time-piece. You’re not always going to be within earshot of a large striking clock…

threat level clock

There are a few time-telling devices in the magical world of J. K. Rowling’s imagination, and I noticed that the threat level clock in the USA’s Ministry of Magic, as seen in the first Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them movie, has the numbers 1 – 24 around the edge of the dial. Perhaps, unusually for the US, they use the 24 hour clock in preference to the 12 hour version? Who knows…

Many of the graphical creations for the Wizarding World franchise are created by the House of MinaLima, who designed this beautiful clock face. You can buy this as a print, along with many other magical items, from their store, but not as a working 24 hour clock, or, indeed, as a working Magical Exposure Threat Level indicator. I’m not sure how the astrolabe-style stereographic projection rings work, nor what the astrological symbols signify. But then, I’m a muggle.

Forté watches

The 24 hour watch fans at the AAA watch club make the beautiful Forté collection of real 24 hour watches. Here is the Forté ALPHA model, 24HR-ALPHA-24S, with 24 at the top of the dial (yes, they also make them with “00” and “12” at the top!) in varying sizes. Also shown here is the luminous night vision view.

24 hour alpha24s model 1200

Use the following coupon code at the checkout to obtain a 10% discount off the price of these watches:

24hourtime-info

Svalbard watches

The Svalbard Watch company have just added more models to their already extensive range of 24-hour watches:

Svalbard july 2018

The two regulator designs show the hour hand in the top small dial, with 12 at the very top; the large hand is the minute indicator. This design, once used on precision clocks, is based on the sensible idea that you probably already know what the hour is, and are looking at your watch more to get some idea of the precise minute.

A description of all new models is available on the official Svalbard website. You can use the code “24HOURTIME24” to get a 7% discount.