Version 1.4
Released on Saturday, 9 December 2000

Created by Matthijs Hollemans
mahlzeit@bigfoot.com
http://home.concepts.nl/~hollies
http://www.weirdexperiments.com

What is it
WebWatch is an unofficial port of Swatch's Internet Time utility for BeOS R5 or higher that runs inside the Deskbar.

Someone at Swatch (you know, the company that makes the watches) came up with an idea for a universal time format that eliminates time zones and geographical borders. The idea is very simple: time is no longer measured in hours, minutes, and seconds, but in "beats." A single day consists of 1000 beats, so each beat corresponds to 1 minute and 26.4 seconds.

This "Internet Time" is the same all over the world, because it is measured relatively to something called the Biel Mean Time (BMT), a new meridian that lies in Switzerland. A day in Internet Time begins at midnight BMT, or @000 Swatch Beats, 12 noon is equivalent to @500 beats, and so on. So if it's @812 at my place, it's also 812 beats at yours and everyone else's.

Please check out the Swatch website for more information.

How to use it
Simply double-click the WebWatch icon to install WebWatch into the Deskbar. To get rid of it, right-click WebWatch in the Deskbar and select the Quit option from the pop-up menu.

NOTE: If you are upgrading from WebWatch 1.2 or an older version, then you must uninstall that version first. As of version 1.3, WebWatch works a little differently than before. It now is a real Deskbar add-on, which means that the Deskbar will automagically start it. Earlier versions needed to start WebWatch from the boot script, but that is no longer necessary. Uninstalling the old version makes sure that everything is cleaned up nicely.

Legal stuff
WebWatch is public domain, so you may do anything you like with it. No warranties expressed or implied. I am not responsible for whatever may happen to whomever, whenever.

Note that I am in no way affiliated with Swatch, and that I fully respect their copyrights and trademarks.

History
Version 1.0 (Saturday, 14 August 1999)

• First version.

• New release for BeOS R5. Older versions of WebWatch came with source code only, which was automatically compiled during installation. However, because of header file changes between R5 and older versions of the BeOS, and because the free version of BeOS R5 doesn't necessarily include development tools, WebWatch 1.1 is already compiled. This means that it only runs on the Intel platform, since I don't have a PowerPC machine.

• Finally fixed a long-standing bug with WebWatch's background color. Now it uses the same color as the Deskbar.

• The time is now written using a bold font, making it better readable.
• Thanks to Jason Parks for turning WebWatch into a real Deskbar add-on. Because of this, WebWatch no longer needs to be installed in the UserBootscript; the Deskbar starts it automatically. This also means that WebWatch is now BeOS R5 or higher only.

• With certain fonts, WebWatch didn't always fit in the Deskbar.