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I'd like to hear from more people with smart watches who are happy with them, to better understand the appeal.

I'm really happy with the almost-smartwatch Pebble. I wear it in preference to my other watches (and I've always worn a watch). There are three things I like most about it:

1. I can, and do, have the sound and vibrate on my phone turned off. I don't worry about silencing my phone going into meetings, the theater, or dinner (or unsilencing it after), and when I leave my phone somewhere in the house or on my desk at work, I still get alerts on my watch when the phone rings or I get a text (the Bluetooth range is surprisingly good). And I don't have to worry that my phone is sitting there, ringing on my desk, and annoying co-workers. Basically, it helps me to be less of a cellphone asshole.
2. The battery life is acceptable. Charging once a week is not as good as having a year between battery changes, but it's acceptable.
3. It's pretty simple to program (if you're a programmer), and it lets me have bizarro faces, like showing the time in dozenal, or having a YesWatch-style face, or whatever.

I have gotten more positive comments about this watch from strangers than any single other thing I've ever owned. I've been asked about it on public transport in NYC and in check-out lines in Philadelphia and London, and at twice I've had people literally stop mid-sentence to ask about it.

I'm very supprised not to see anyone lookng for a watch which keeps solar and lunar time. What geeks have the chance to connect to mother earth and feel what she says the time is. A nice example is from http://www.yeswatch.com/ anyone is welcome to buy me one :-).

This watch is not super cheap (starts at about $400), but it's not too expensive either considering what it does:

Yes watch (tech specs page)
http://www.yeswatch.com/wrist-watch/timekeeper/tec h_specs.html

They show the time with one hand, as well as digitally on the face. The face also shows daytime and nighttime by shading in the face of the watch to indicate when the sun is down, depending on the city you're in. Also shows moonset/moonrise/moon phase. Take a look, it's easier to understand from the pictures on the site...

The "Cozmo" line seems to be the least expensive, at about $400, although there is a "Zulu" model on eBay right now for about $300.

This watch is not super cheap (starts at about $400), but it's not too expensive either considering what it does:

Yes watch (tech specs page)
http://www.yeswatch.com/wrist-watch/timekeeper/tec h_specs.html

They show the time with one hand, as well as digitally on the face. The face also shows daytime and nighttime by shading in the face of the watch to indicate when the sun is down, depending on the city you're in. Also shows moonset/moonrise/moon phase. Take a look, it's easier to understand from the pictures on the site...

The "Cozmo" line seems to be the least expensive, at about $400, although there is a "Zulu" model on eBay right now for about $300.

A few years back, I decided I wanted a "nice" watch...even though I'm surrounded by clocks, I still wanted something nice for my wrist. (it's about the only jewelry I wear, aside from my wedding ring).

As I looked, I was astounded at what was out there in the watch world. Unfortunatly, it's difficult to get really good information on all watches (manufacturers' sites are full of flash, and any Google search generally turns up thousands of fly-by-night outfits). I quickly decided I wanted something elegant, analog, and with a few key features (perpetual calendar, especially, 'cause I'm sick of resetting the date every month).

Some watches I looked at:

* The Yes Watch - Very cool concept, especially with the solar focus, the moon phase, and the day/night display. I decided against it because I didn't like the look of the LCD. If they'd used a pair of overlapping black wedges or something instead of individual LCD bars for the day/night display, and maybe a small analog dial instead of the digital time readout, then I'd probably have bought one. (again, I was focusing on mechanical (or at least semi-mechanical like a quartz).

* The Epos Emotion is especially nice. Very simple and elegant (that is, not gaudy like some seem to get), with a nice triple-date feature and a moon dial. This is my current favorite, but the nearest dealer is in New York, IIRC, and I'm not about to drop a kilobuck on something I haven't at least held in my hands, and definitely not from the grey-market resellers on the web.

* I briefly looked at Breitling, and while some of those are very nice and interestingly complex, most of them were too busy-looking for my tastes. (the same goes for some of the Citizen models...cool stuff, but I really don't need an aircraft fuel consumption slide rule on my wrist.) (now, if they had a regular slide rule, that'd be cool).

* While browsing through a very high-end watch store in Tysons Corner, VA, I picked up a free "magazine" that turned out to be a promotional rag for the International Watch Company. It had a great article about their Grand Complication, which sells for a cool quarter-million a piece. A sidebar article by their customer support team had some great stories, about people who own them complaining abut it stopping working after an ocean swim (he'd damaged the crystal beforehand), and another person complaining that the the chimes were inconsistent on his two watches (yes, he owned *two* of these...presumably one gold, and one platinum, and he was annoyed that the tones were a bit off).

* And I don't remember how I found this one, but the granddaddy (as far as I've seen) for complications and cost is the dual-faced Patek Phillipe Sky Moon Tourbillon. I seem to remember they go for multiple millions of dollars a piece.

* I ended up buying a Tissot New Titanium. It's not an automatic, but it's got some good features I like. Perpetual calendar (though on an LCD display), alarm, chrono, sapphire crystal, and a titanium band / case. Unfortunatly, this was never available in the US and I had to order from a company in Switzerland (who sent along a box of chocolate with it :) ). I think it may be discontinued, too... (I can't even find it on their webpage anymore, which highlights my previous comment about the difficulty of finding good information online).

What I'd really like to know is how one can get into collecting such expensive timepieces. Somehow, I imagine that you'd have t

http://yeswatch.com/

If you're serious, travel to Hong Kong, Bangkok, or any other major Asian city with a lax view of copyrights.

You'll be able to start a large collection of many different styles for not very much money. And on top of that you will have traveled around and have a story for all of your watches. The story really makes the watch.

Other than that, try a
Casio Waveceptor (note, doesn't work in New England)
Fossil PDA Watch
USB Watch
YES watch
MP3 watch
Sleep Tracker Watch (too bad it is so ugly)

Tokyo Flash
Nike Watches (always something interesting)

Also, consider pocketwatches. They're rare enough that you get immediate oddball points for using one, but they're common enough that you can find interesting ones.

A lot of time when I look at my watch, I don't care what time it is, but rather, where I am in the day. I can see, at a glance, whether it's early or late, for example. I find it much easier to recognize patterns than trying to read a bunch of numbers. Of course, with an analog watch I can tell what time it is, too, so I have the best of both worlds.

Though the Yes watch looks pretty ingriguing.

Link

Last time this was asked, I ended up with a Solstice Ace from YesWatch. A novel way to display time and your place in it, more elegant than the Casio Databanks I'd worn for years, and chicks dig it.

Last time this was asked, I ended up with a Solstice Ace from YesWatch. A novel way to display time and your place in it, more elegant than the Casio Databanks I'd worn for years, and chicks dig it.

Link to the Timex watch has already been modded up (or posted first, I don't know which), but the Yes Solstice watch is the coolest one i've seen in a while.

Link to the Timex watch has already been modded up (or posted first, I don't know which), but the Yes Solstice watch is the coolest one i've seen in a while.

1. DecimalTime.org
2. Universal-Time.org (one of the oldest that I know of)

In my experience, the difference in the standards are derived from one fundamental opinion: how much are you willing to deviate from how people use time to get universality?

Incidentally, one of the big problems with universal (using the term very loosely), decimal time (and the two do tend to go together) is that with universal time, it is very difficult for people to measure local time. What time do the stores open? What time is lunch? Using technology such as the Yes Watch solves this problem, and puts everything into perspective. The Yes Watch shows where you are in the day -- it is easy to see how far you are from sunrise or sunset; it is extremely convenient, and practical. If this technology were combined with a universal, decimal time format, universal time would become instantly practicaly. You look at the watch for your perspective on the day; you look at the decimal time to schedule your telephone conversation with someone in a different time zone. Very cool.

If you're interested in this, check out YesClock, a software implementation of the Yes Watch. It displays time using the same YesWatch paradigm, and has the option of displaying time in decimal format.

If you want a truely universal time measurement system, you won't get it, because of relativity. Theoretically, any time system we develop is going to fall to pieces fairly rapidly if we start travelling around at even moderately relativistic velocities. So you have to swallow that and pick the next best thing, say, measuring everything in seconds. Only, that sucks. Imagine trying to schedule a meeting for sometime next week. How many seconds is that from now? It doesn't scale very well, either. Plus, the fact of the matter is that people living on this planet live by a 24 hour day, and 'days' are a very useful concept. So you add the concept of a day. Now you're way off universality; as soon as we start living on Mars, the time system will have to be restructured. But you suck it up and continue. Years are really useful too -- most humans on the planet live by a cycle of seasons, and just counting 'days since the eruption of Mt. St. Helens' has scalability problems as well. So you add years -- heck, you're already dependant on the Earth by using days.

So you have years and days; when does a year start? When does a day start? Well, you could put the start of the day at the international date line, since the start point is arbitrary. But since the start point is completely arbitrary, why not start a day at a current standard start-point: UTC, AKA Greenwich Mean Time? It would make conversion easier.

How about the year start date? Do you make conversion easier, and start it with the definately Christian-centric BC/AD dividing line, or try for something less religiously tied, like the year of the eruption of some major volcano?

My point being, that when you really start discussing this issue, you start getting all of these questions that don't have clear answers, and you end up with purists, who support solutions which are -- inconvenient, at best, and a wide swath of people who compromise to some degree on all of the points. The end result is a huge number of proposals.

By the way, Swatch tried this with BMT. They even make metric time watches, that measure time in 1000ths of a day. Being arrogant, they put 000 at midnight, Buel Switzerland (the corporate home of Swatch), which was a mistake; they should have settled for either the IDL or GMT, both of which have reasonably strong arguments. They failed in not defining a metric date measurement to boot.

Personally, I measure all dates in Gregorian Year+Day (IE, today is *2002-186). It is a pretty good compromise.