Time.is

http://time.is/

by ddw • 14 years ago

661 107 14 years ago

time.is

aravindc• 14 years ago

This is exactly what I wanted. I used to google everytime to find time. Not anymore, and it looks cool too.

wilfra• 14 years ago

Same, Google just lost a few searches a week from me :)

riobard• 14 years ago

I still like this one instead: http://everytimezone.com/

Shtirlic• 14 years ago

White on black is perfect.

Tobu• 14 years ago

I'd prefer the logo to be a bit more subdued over the relaxing black background.

mtr• 14 years ago

Shows incorrect time for Chile. DST isn't until April 28th. http://www.timeanddate.com/news/time/chile-longer-dst-2012.h...

apaprocki6• 14 years ago

It means that they didn't apply the latest tzdata2012a or b update released the first week of March which contained the America/Santiago zone change.

phillmv4• 14 years ago

Time is a surprisingly difficult subject to get right.

time_is• 14 years ago

Thanks, we have corrected this now. :)

bbx3• 14 years ago

Exactly what I needed.

For the last few weeks, I've been trying to increase my productivity by getting rid of time tracking. So I decided to hide my computer's clock.

Sometimes, like when I have an appointment, I still need to check what time it is. Googling "time" doesn't always work (I don't know why exactly). So I bookmarked this site [1] but the information density is so high that I need to scan the page in order to get the time.

Time.is works quite well, with useful customization options, though it still carries bits of useless information (like the time zones at the bottom). But the time's font size is big enough to trigger instant focus.

UPDATE: as guptaneil pointed out, clicking the time (or navigating to http://time.is/just) removes all the clutter. Thanks for the tip.

[1] http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=328

guptaneil• 14 years ago

Accidentally found this, but tap the time to make the rest of the page fade away. Or go to http://time.is/just

verelo• 14 years ago

When i click on the time the google +1 button doesnt go away. Anyone else?

Firefox latest.

ElliotH• 14 years ago

I'd favor this now, but for Google I find the phrase "<place> time now" works more consistently than just "time".

icebraining• 14 years ago

What OS do you use? I usually just type 'date' on the terminal.

bbx3• 14 years ago

Mainly Win 7. Otherwise Mac OS X. Sometimes Win XP, and very rarely Ubuntu.

But I almost never have a terminal open (and don't have a shortcut for that either) whereas Firefox almost always is. So I'm just 1 click away rather than 4 characters away.

You taught me something though (I highly prefer typing on a keyboard than using a mouse or, worse, a touchpad) and I wish I had to spend more time in a terminal.

mrud• 14 years ago

I really like http://worldtimebuddy.com/ as it allows you to see time zone differences without the need to calculate it yourself.

djsla• 14 years ago

It does not do clock sync/accuracy determination. Time.is is rather unique that way. However, I'm skeptical over the importance of that feature.

disclosure: worldtimebuddy founder.

aeden• 14 years ago

Nice job on this. I usually use http://everytimezone.com but I like how I can configure this with the zones that matter to me. It would be nice if I could easily use my favorites when doing the Here -> There comparison.

zarroba• 14 years ago

I would still prefer to have the option to select the timezone. Sometimes I want to attend some workshops that announce the time in one of the US timezones and its always difficult to do the conversion.

napoleoncomplex• 14 years ago

What would be ideal in this case is a browser add-on or a bookmarklet that enables dynamic conversion.

The add-on would be simpler, as a text-select and right click could show the selected time in your own time zone in the right-click menu.

It's something I've missed every single time some press conference or event is announced, and it just says 12:00 EST.

darklajid• 14 years ago

That would be, as someone else mentioned in this thread, worldtimebuddy. I use it for exactly that purpose and consider it gorgeous.

acerimmer• 14 years ago

Another very nice web for timezones is http://tmzns.com.

sabatier• 14 years ago

This is gorgeous.

mwexler• 14 years ago

I like Time.gov, personally; it was the first site I ever found around this concept and so it has a soft spot.

I keep finding all my physical atomic clock synced clocks (yes, I have more than one, they are cheap these days) disagreeing, sometimes by 2 seconds or more, which makes me laugh (great ideas ruined by poor implementation). I find many of the web sites (listed in comments or the original post) to also differ, perhaps for similar reasons of implementation choices.

I would presume all the sites work off various implementations of NTP, http://www.ntp.org/ plus some trusted source.

I guess my question is: has anyone found a site which is really, really accurate by reducing all the latency and lag, so what you see on the screen really is, to whatever precision, accurate? And would said person have access to a really good source for the comparison point? I don't seem to have one. Yes, I should have stopped at 3 so that I could pick the 2 closest ones (like the old saying: 1 clock is unsure, 2 clocks are worse, but 3 at least lets you make a decision)

I wonder, would you need to have NTP on the client side synced to a trusted source (say, in java, flash, or javascript) to get a good reading? Any server serving over HTTP induces lag, I would think, and NTP is supposed to account for transmission delays, or so I recall.

Thanks for sharing, another interesting time site to add to the collection.

phillmv4• 14 years ago

MY understanding of the issue confirms that you would basically need a js implementation of ntp in order for any of this to work.

That's why I laughed when Time.is tried to tell me that my clock was off by 1.8 seconds. Barring the sentence above, it just has no way of determining that.

dfc20• 14 years ago

All things considered it is not such a bad estimate of the time. It looks like it makes it queries the local clock three times to get an estimation of the clock deltas and network delay . Why do you think 1.8 seconds is wrong? What is your ntpq billboard?

ComputerGuru2• 14 years ago

The answer to your question is GPS devices. They're supposed to take into account (most of) what you mentioned, and even though consumer GPS devices are fairly cheap and not up to industrial or even military GPS, time is one thing they do right. In fact, for several projects that needed a reliable time source instead of using the (as you noticed) poorly implemented atomic clock radio frequencies, we would just buy GPS chips to just extract the time signal.

I simply don't have any clocks that aren't part of electronic devices, my wristwatch being the exception (but it's analog (Roman numerals, even :P) and only has second accuracy anyway, so I don't fuss about it).

Simply put, all my devices take care of all this for me. My MacBook and Windows 7 work desktop are both configured to sync to the Apple NTP servers (lowest ping for me, AND they're always up. Microsoft's are down a good 10% of the time in my experience). My cell phone gets its signal from God knows where (iPhone 4S - it could technically be using one of 4 different sources) but is always more or less in sync with the rest (I just checked with time.is for what little that is worth, however, and while my MacBook says that my time is within the margin of error "The difference from Time.is was -0.007 seconds (±0.018 seconds).", my iPhone returns "Your clock is 0.5 seconds slow" - but I would trust my iPhone's NTP implementation over time.is' response as its the same OS X NTP that got it "right" on my MacBook) as it can theoretically use a) GPS b) GSM/CDMA towers c) NTP d) time from PC sync.

All my other electronic devices fall in the same category. Garmin nüvi (GPS), Kindle (NTP, auto configured), Cisco IP Phone (NTP, manually configured), Brother printer (NTP, manually configured). I purposely do not set my microwave clock because a) I'll never get it right, and b) any time the power cuts, it resets and in 2012 they're still too stupid to add a 5 cent battery to keep the time in case of power outage.

dfc20• 14 years ago

NTP does a lot more than what you theorized about and none of it is trivial.

FYI: Ping is a remarkably bad tool to gauge the accuracy of remote time source. What is the delay value from "ntpq -p"

I highly doubt that Apple's time servers are your best bet for time synch. Use the pool.ntp.org servers, preferabbly with your country code: e.g. us.pool.ntp.org, ca.pool.ntp.org.

dfc20• 14 years ago

Radio controlled clocks are subject to numerous sources of error. However two seconds is pretty bad, according to NIST the RCC "should always be accurate to within one second of UTC, assuming that they synchronize at least every other day and that their quartz oscillator is of reasonable quality." How far do you live from Fort Collins, CO? I have included some WWVB references at the end...

My GPS + Pulse Per Second fed ntp server is remarkably better than a radio controlled clock. The Sure GPS evaluation board probably costs less than your radio controlled clock:)

  dfc@ronin:~$ ntpq -p 
       remote           refid      st t when poll reach   delay   offset  jitter
  ==============================================================================
  oGPS_NMEA(0)     .GPS.            0 l   12   16  377    0.000    0.001   0.001
   bonehed.lcs.mit .CDMA.           1 u   32   64  377   51.365    0.670   0.364
   rooster.stonybr .CDMA.           1 u   14   64  377   49.019    6.141   0.445
   navobs1.oar.net .USNO.           1 u    1   64  377   57.310    9.494   0.456
   meg.ee.lbl.gov  .PPS.            1 u    1   64  377   88.639   -2.204   0.270
  dfc@ronin:~$ ntptime
  ntp_gettime() returns code 0 (OK)
    time d3076554.79d48450  Sun, Mar 11 2012 13:54:28.475, (.475899416),
    maximum error 234 us, estimated error 0 us, TAI offset 34
  ntp_adjtime() returns code 0 (OK)
    modes 0x0 (),
    offset 0.856 us, frequency -32.941 ppm, interval 1 s,
    maximum error 234 us, estimated error 0 us,
    status 0x2001 (PLL,NANO),
    time constant 4, precision 0.001 us, tolerance 500 ppm,

Radio clock reference material:

NIST Page on Radio clocks: http://www.nist.gov/pml/div688/grp40/radioclocks.cfm

"How accurate is a radio controlled clock" http://tf.nist.gov/general/pdf/2429.pdf

"WWVB Radio Controlled Clocks: Recommended Practices for Manufacturers and Consumers": http://tf.nist.gov/timefreq/general/pdf/2422.pdf.

lukeschlather• 14 years ago

>"physical atomic clock"

Are you trolling or did you really miss the whole phrase "physical atomic clock synced clocks?"

ken• 14 years ago

When I was a kid, my dad would always set our clocks by tuning the radio to one of the atomic clock broadcasts from Fort Collins. This might be the same source as your automatically synchronized clocks, but the advantage is that it's human-listenable, and not going through any computer networks or algorithms between Colorado and you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_clock#List_of_radio_time...

dfc20• 14 years ago

"The advantage is that it's human-listenable, and not going through any computer networks or algorithms between Colorado and you." That is an advantage?

The Fort Collins signal is awful in the northeast. If you want to deal with the disadvantages of not using advanced computer algorithms to govern your clock i would recommend the USNO's phone service:

Time Voice Announcer, Washington, DC: 202-762-1401 & 202-762-1069 (DSN 762-1401, 762-1069)

Time Voice Announcer, Colorado Springs, CO: 719-567-6742 (DSN 560-6742)

rootbear• 14 years ago

Same here. My Dad is a life-long ham radio operator and if I hear a WWV broadcast now, it takes me back to my childhood in a flash.

On a related note, I always liked the British time announcements that used three tones, with the designated time being "at the third stroke". It's like a music conductor conducting a measure before you start playing or singing. I wonder if it's measurably more accurate than just playing a tone with the proper time is reached.

apaprocki6• 14 years ago

In order to achieve the highest possible accuracy, you have to bring in your own hardware. We use appliances with internal rubidium oscillator clocks which also synchronize with the signal from all visible GPS satellites. This is as good as one can get if you really want to ensure proper time without having an external dependence on a third party or network.

edit: A paper from 1989 on the subject: http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/ptti/1989/Vol%2021_14.pdf

dfc20• 14 years ago

But you are relying on a third party / network. Your rubidium clock is only good for accurately measuring the length of a second. It has no idea when a UTC second begins. You are relying on GPS time in order to know when the UTC begins.

You need time and frequency for "proper time."

antidaily2• 14 years ago

Time.gov is slow and ugly and doesn't work on my phone. Fuck time.gov.

lotharbot• 14 years ago

Have you tried the naval observatory master clock at http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/simpletime.html ?

sylvinus• 14 years ago

Nice, however on my Chrome Mac there's a flash each second with the re-render.

ynniv• 14 years ago

When clicking the time in FF 10.0.2, everything disappears expect the Google +1.

libria• 14 years ago

OP, what does this line do?

    if (wn == 1) pwn = '1-ին շաբաթ';

It looked like something related to week number; looks interesting.

sushimako• 14 years ago

Google Translate says it's Armenian and means "1st week"

Aramgutang• 14 years ago

In a fuller context:

    if(p_wn=='hy'){if(wn==1)pwn='1-ին շաբաթ';else pwn=wn+'-րդ շաբաթ'}

So if the locale is "hy" (Armenian), and the week number is one, set the string to "1st week", else set the string to "#th week" (both in Armenian).

Unlike English, which also has exceptions for "2nd" and "3rd", Armenian only uses a different suffix for "1st".

silentscope2• 14 years ago

clever url folks.

silentscope2• 14 years ago

I wasn't being sarcastic guys. I meant that, it's pretty clever.

eropple• 14 years ago

You weren't downvoted for being sarcastic.

You were downvoted for adding nothing to the discussion.

tibbon• 14 years ago

Simple, but awesome. About two years ago I had the idea (but never implemented) to try and re-make various since use web tools and calculators using modern web technology. Things like interest/mortgage calculators, voltage drop calculators, difference between two dates, etc.

So many of them like Time.gov rely on stuff like Flash or Java, or 1998 style Javascript, which I don't really dig. Definitely a nice little hole there for making something cool.

hrktb• 14 years ago

The handling of internationalization is surprisingly good. Texts, including town names, are almost all shown in the preferred language, and the size variations introduced by the translations are well handled.

mdda2• 14 years ago

For those alarmed at the offset...

# yum install ntpdate

# ntpdate -u ntp-1.vt.edu

# hwclock -w

"Your time is exact!"

morsch• 14 years ago

This is an unobtrusive app that does the job for Android (root required/recommended): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ru.org.amip.Cl...

My ZTE Blade/CM7 was obnoxiously bad at keeping time, probably a software bug or something.

justincormack2• 14 years ago

Not sure why Android does not have ntp built in. My network does not broadcast a time signal, maybe it is just assumed they all do.

dfc20• 14 years ago

ntpdate is dead and is discontinued. Use an actual daemon to govern your time source.

I thought redhat installed ntpd or chrony by default. I know chrony is the default for the next fedora release. If you have ntpd/chronyd installed your advice is horrible and not just because you pointed everyone to Virginia Tech's time server.

mdda2• 14 years ago

Thanks : Updated procedure (for Fedora without chronyd/ntpd running already) :

# yum install chrony

# systemctl enable chronyd.service

# systemctl start chronyd.service

Sorry if the (working) pointers before were horrible. Hopefully this is more useful - the servers used are {N}.fedora.pool.ntp.org.

guylhem2• 14 years ago

I like it a lot. Easy to remember URL. However the services offered are not so good.

At least there is no RFC 867 and RFC 868 date on port 37 and port 13.

This is deprecated, I know, but rdate is still the easiest way to fix the date on a system which do not require precision. I did run my own minimal daemon on my DSL modem for the various gizmos I have that include busybox (thus rdate) and where recompiling to get a ntp would be overkill. (the right day and the right hour are more than enough)

time.nist.gov removed RFC 867 (port 13) and 868 (port 27) support. time-nw.nist.gov kept it a bit longer, then I used by DSL modem, which went in RMA and so guylhem.org is also down.

I'll try to email the author and offer to give a hand.

dfc20• 14 years ago

rdate is awful that is why NIST killed it. If you want a fire and forget time check:

  sntp pool.ntp.org

guylhem2• 14 years ago

I know rdate is awful but when that's all you have and don't feel like crosscompiling for a device which does not even requires a minute of precision, it does the job.

Technical excellence is not always required, and having more choices usually is a good idea.

gwern• 14 years ago

    Your clock is 0.2 seconds slow.
    Accuracy of synchronization was ±0.625 seconds

If the result is within the margin of error, wouldn't it be better to just not tell me at all?

dfc20• 14 years ago

I imagine that the author of the page has some scientific background and therefore feels that it is appropriate to publish the margin of error alongside any estimation.

moe• 14 years ago

Reminds me of the radio clock that I have in the bathroom.

It is labeled "DCF signal - precision time", yet is off by hours most of the time (jumps randomly).

I keep it for the entertainment value. Guests always have a good chuckle when they enter the bathroom at 16:41 and leave it at 23:41.

ilaksh• 14 years ago

Wow.. that's a new one. Now I have to buy an .is domain.

TazeTSchnitzel• 14 years ago

what.is? love.is? it.is?

roryokane• 14 years ago

I'm wondering how atomic clocks in general get set in the first place. Did, at some point, scientists calculate when the sun was exactly overhead Greenwich and call that noon? Because I would think that that calculation would have a multi-second error, so setting your clock to the second would be pointless.

Or maybe there is no such thing as "actual physical time" and there is only what people have agreed to call the standard. But in that case why do time sources, such as time.gov and time.windows.com, still give different times? I would think Microsoft would have fixed any bugs in their NTP implementation by now, so it's not that. If it's just politics about nobody wanting to move to someone else's time, then there's no way to tell which source is the real standard, so your most practical choice is to synchronize your clock to the times you deal with. That is, set your clock to your clock at work, or an average of your friends clocks, or whatever source they get their time from. I don't mind the existence of central time sources, because they are better than having to go out and find someone else's clock, but they shouldn't call themselves official if they aren't actually official.

So, does anybody know how the starting time for central time sources is chosen, and if any source is worthy of being called "the real time"?

dfc20• 14 years ago

UTC is a "paper clock." The calculation of UTC has nanosecond error, not multisecond error. The most recent data for the calculation of UTC:

ftp://ftp2.bipm.org/pub/tai/publication/cirt.290

Time is a really tricky and interesting topic. I would start with:

"From Sundials to Atomic Clocks: Understanding Time and Frequency"

http://www.nist.gov/timefreq/general/pdf/1796.pdf

"Originally published in 1977, this full-length book provides a comprehensive, easy-to-understand introduction to the field of time and frequency. Readers of nearly all ages and educational backgrounds should find it enjoyable. 306 pages."

phillmv4• 14 years ago

Well… it's an arbitrary standard. We just call a day one full rotation of the earth, and we just happen to divide it into 24hr periods with 60 subdivisions.

Theoretically, you could measure the rotation of the earth and call that a day, but I have no idea how you would measure that down to the millisecond.

As to "Real Time", I don't know about the specific legalities, but the standard goes as follows: everyone uses UTC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Universal_Time which is based off the International Atomic Time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Atomic_Time

I too would be interested in how they picked the beginning epoch, i.e. "this moment right here is midnight from which all other seconds shall be referenced against" but in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter - the only thing that matters is the standard we agreed to measure against.

dfc20• 14 years ago

"Theoretically, you could measure the rotation of the earth and call that a day"

This is not theoretical; this is known as sidereal time and is measured to the nanosecond...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidereal_time

troels• 14 years ago

The rotation of Earth is actually not as stable a thing as one might expect. See for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_second

dfc20• 14 years ago

NIST recently published the new ntp.leap file and it looks like we will have one this July...

  3550089600	35	# 1 Jul 2012 [1]

dfc20• 14 years ago

A lot of people are making disparaging comments about the acccuracy of the site's time estimation with little or no explanation/data. All things considered (three samples to estimate clock deltas and network delay) the time estimation is fairly accurate.

time.is reports my clock is:

  -0.004 seconds (±0.021 seconds).

I have a stratum one time source on the local network (gps+pps) and my ntptime agrees with the time.is estimation:

  dfc@bushido:~$ ntptime 
  ntp_gettime() returns code 0 (OK)
    time d3077752.4160a634  Sun, Mar 11 2012 15:11:14.255, (.255381196),
    maximum error 260579 us, estimated error 3294 us, TAI offset 34
  ntp_adjtime() returns code 0 (OK)
    modes 0x0 (),
    offset -4842.630 us, frequency 8.446 ppm, interval 1 s,
    maximum error 260579 us, estimated error 3294 us,
    status 0x6001 (PLL,NANO,MODE),
    time constant 10, precision 0.001 us, tolerance 500 ppm,

NB: this is my laptop. so powersaving, heat fluctuations are adding a decent amount of uncertainty from a metrological standpoint.

7952• 14 years ago

It would be good if you could make the title of the tab show the time.

MattRogish2• 14 years ago

Cool site! QR code on the "About" page is a head-scratcher, though.. http://time.is/about

jarek2• 14 years ago

The idea is you can scan it with your phone and not have to type the URL in. Not sure how many people actually do that though.

MattRogish2• 14 years ago

A) If you're viewing on your phone, it's mobile optimized B) If you're viewing it on your desktop, why would you want to go to your phone? C) Time.is has to be the easiest URL to enter by hand in a device browser. :D

samt• 14 years ago

Tell me I'm not the first to see the irony of a page full of comments debating ntp, GPS and atomic clocks, while there are two interesting front page stories about the value of ambitious goals.

pbhjpbhj• 14 years ago

that reminds me - todo: http://whatsthetime.in/

Steveism• 14 years ago

I've always been fond of the official navy.mil time site. It's an ascii lovers paradise: http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/cgi-bin/timer.pl

iag• 14 years ago

I am seeing roughly +/- 0.1s accuracy range on my browser. Can someone please enlighten me on why we cannot reduce this further? I assume this page has <100ms response time, can't they get to a better accuracy range?

drewjoh• 14 years ago

Reminded me of this (Daylight Savings Time explained): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84aWtseb2-4 Madness!

cynwoody• 14 years ago

Very nice!

My little Ubuntu machine is -0.018 seconds (±0.009 seconds).

My MBP is -0.012 seconds (±0.021 seconds).

I recommend you add a percentile score of exactness, along with breakdowns based on platform, and suggestions about what to do if the percentile is disappointing.

chanux• 14 years ago

Simple and amazing.

I used a simple shell script to query timezone info to find world time in CLI https://gist.github.com/2020097

treelovinhippie• 14 years ago

Any idea what geolocation method they're using here? It got my city spot-on when usual IP geolocators put me elsewhere.

ideaoverload• 14 years ago

The clock display is nice but not a killer for me. Here&There time comparison in different time zones is the best I have seen. Full page calendar with multiple months is very simple but works great for me. This is becomes my favorite site for time/date related stuff.

Time.is

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