Need feedback – A clock to eliminate time zone calculations | Hacker News Reader

Need feedback – A clock to eliminate time zone calculations

4 pointshhebbo4 comments

I'd love to hear your thoughts/feedback on a product I'm working on (thehtime.com).

I'm building a new clock to eliminate time zone calculations for remote teams. Why? To simplify scheduling & communicating time when working globally. Well, this concept exists and is called UTC, however UTC isn’t really used in our daily lives.

The clock I'm building utilizes a new UTC concept, a UTC that rotates with you according to your location on Earth. In other words, the clock knows where you are and adjusts itself for you. This unifies the reading of time everywhere at any given moment. Therefore, time zone calculations can be eliminated.

The idea of the clock (hTime) is not to change the clock, but to extend it by adding a new layer to it, a global time layer. hTime utilizes the same time system we all know, it comprises 60 minutes and seconds, and 24 local hours. On top of that, there is a new layer of 24 global hours represented in letters. Why letters? Simply to distinguish the local time from the global one, so numbers for local times and letters for global ones. This global layer is the one that adjusts itself for you and rotates according to your location on earth. This again unifies the ready of time.

So, no time zone math, no PDT, EDT, CEST, and no back and forth emails anymore.

Random thoughts from a random person on the internet ...

I took me ages to work out what you are actually proposing. I found your explanation not to help at all. It is well-known to be difficult for the inventor to explain a new idea to other people. You have been thinking about this for ages, but others are coming to it without your level of knowledge, without your insight, and without your context.

I can see now, after 10s of minutes of thinking about it, how this might be a useful thing. Perhaps not for me, but certainly for some. The potential market is small, but anyone who does have a use for this will, after a while, wonder how they got along without it.

It's a bit like a telephone, though, in that selling just one is a bit useless, you need multiple people all to have it, because it's a synchronisation system, and all relevant parties will need to have one.

Will this be a physical device? Or is it a web page? I don't understand how you intend to "actualise" it.

But certainly you need a better "hook" for people, and a better narrative to explain what it's doing, and why/how it will help.

Added in edit: I've now read some of the comments made elsewhere on previous submissions. Some of them are still relevant, but it still seems to me that your biggest problem is drawing people into understanding why your solution solves a problem.

Thanks a lot for commenting, very helpful.

You're right, the current problem is drawing people to understanding and using the clock. Changing the way people perceive time isn't easy. However, it's a great challenge and that's what I'm currently working and focusing on.

I like your example of the telephone, the adoption trigger is definitely very similar. There has to be at least 2 parties in different time zones using it in order to get its benefits.

To your question, it's currently a webpage, you can check it out on https://thehtime.com. Basically I'm experimenting with it as a webpage. Once/if this works, I have many ideas of other products that can be built on top of it.

- What could be a better hook for you if I may ask? - Do you work/communicate across time zones yourself?

Have you considered making an API?

It also seems like what used to be called a user interface "widget." For this, a little piece of embeddible javascript might work.

In other words, making the clock something developers can use in their apps and something organizations can add to their websites might make the system easier to adopt.

Yes, I'm considering and planning it. In fact, I'm thinking either building integrations myself like a Slack or Google Calendar one, or the widget idea, I have both of them on the short-term roadmap. Any other suggestions/feedback?

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