For centuries people all around the world have recognised Greenwich Mean Time as the standard for 'universal time'. Other timezones are defined by the amount of time by which they are offset from Greenwich Mean Time.

But in 1998 Swiss timepiece maker Swatch introduced a new, technology-driven time standard - Internet Time.

Swatch's Internet Time is measured in beats. These units of time are equivalent to 1 minute 26.4 seconds, and there are 1000 in a day. Internet Time is indicated by an @ sign followed by three digits, from @000 to @999.

The Internet Time day starts at midnight in Swatch's home town of Biel, Switzerland. In order to co-ordinate this worldwide timekeeping standard properly, Swatch created a new meridien at Biel, and a new 'traditional' time standard - Biel Mean Time. BMT keeps track with Central European Winter time, which runs one hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time.

This new method of measuring time earned the support of Nicholas Negroponte, director of the Media Laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, USA. At a ceremony to inaugurate the new Biel Meridien, Negroponte said: 'Cyberspace has no seasons. The virtual world is absent of night and day. Internet Time is not driven by the sun's position, it is driven by yours - your location in space and time.

'Internet Time is absolute time for everybody. Now is now and the same time for all people and places. Later is the same subsequent period for everybody. The numbers are the same for all.

'Internet Time is not geopolitical. It is global ... For many people, real time will be Internet Time.'

In honour of its innovation Swatch created a number of watches that kept Internet time. One of its more bizarre creations is the synchro.beat, which - among other functions - can communicate sonically with a computer via a microphone. It can communicate with other synchro.beat watches too - it even includes an electronic 'compatability test'.

In spite of such innovations, Internet Time has yet to take off in a major way. A few websites still nod in its direction, but most computer users seem content to stick with GMT/UTC, the accepted standard.