Simon Heys
Word Clock
[ZIP] Download for Mac OS X (Universal Binary)
[ZIP] Download for Windows
Word Clock for iPhone (Open Source port by Jeff Leung)
Word Clock is a typographic screensaver for Mac OS X and Windows. It displays a fixed list of all numbers and words sufficient to express any possible date and time as a sentence. Word Clock displays time by highlighting appropriate words as each second passes.
There are two display modes; Linear which is shown above and Rotary which has a nice relationship with traditional analogue clocks.
flickr group
Have a look at the Word Clock flickr group. If you’re using Word Clock we’d love to see a photo of it running on your screen. We’re also pretty nosey so try to include as much of your room as possible…
Languages
Word Clock currently includes 31 languages thanks to the very generous help of a lot of kind people. So far it has Arabic, Brazilian, Catalan, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Macedonian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish and Ukrainian. Help with localisation / translation (or let me know if there are problems with the current ones).
Typography
Fine typographic control is provided so you can change the typeface, leading, kerning and alignment. Position and resize the display however you like. Font size is determined automatically for the best fit.
Burn-in?
Please don’t use this if you’re using a plasma or CRT screen and are worried about burn-in. On a technical note if you use the Rotary Word Clock with the language set to ‘English, 12 hour’ then the clock will not have any stationery parts for more than 5 minutes. However I have no way of guaranteeing that won’t cause burn-in on CRT or plasma screens.
Thanks
Huge thanks to both Ole Zorn and Rasmus Andersson for kick-starting the project with their German and Swedish translations, suggestions, help and general encouragement. Jeff Leung has me all excited with his open-source iPhone version. Also to Jay for her suggestions, testing and cakes. And thanks to the numerous other kind people who have sacrificed time to contribute translations.
Hi Simon,
Congratulations on such a wonderful idea. We are having a lot of fun using it.
Such a swish clock. Looks really good, and just wanted to say thanks.
bijou
Hi Simon, cant find your email address. I just wanted to thank you so much for doing that stuff on my laptop, I need never come into work again!!
Also if you have any trouble getting jay’s images please let me know.
Cheers,
Kuchar
My new favourite screensaver! Will post in on FFF later today. Well done :)
Lovely!
Excellent screensaver, very clever.
Regards
David
Amazing idea, well executed.
Hm, it’s wriiten that i can’t use the screensaver on this computer and that i should contact developer of this software for a newer version )
When the hour “one” is highlighted, it grabs the comma after December, Highlighting “, one”
…or is that comma always highlighted, separating the month form the hour?
Anyway, fantastic job. I’m using this screensaver as my new desktop.
Oh, and is there any way you could add a gradient background (to make it look more like the photo above)?
Also, the ability to set transparency on the colors would be helpful. I know opacity control shows up in OS X’s color picker, but only for certain applications…
Brilliant! lovely new screensaver!
Great work!
Fantastic screensaver! Congratulations.
Love it!
2 q’s… can you make it for a pc, and can you make a version for a wall? i would buy it =)
love it!
AWESOME!
I do love it … I wish you had a version for a PC (I know, horrible, but what can you do when that’s what work gives you.)
I, like Michelle, would buy a version for a wall too. That would be very cool.
this is great! thanks for sharing it!
Big thanks to everyone that’s emailed with offers of help for translation. I’m out of the country for a few days on a shoot so will get back to everyone next week. But keep them coming in the mean time…
Wonderful. I love the customizability. Cheers!
Now I have to use a screensaver! (Now for the PC version so I can use it at work…ick. I may be talking them into a mac, but until then!!)
Your word clock has created a shadow effect of the word clock on the desktop when the screensaver is not active.
wow man, that’s so cool. my compliments
So cool! Thanks for sharing it, I’ve already gotten a few compliments!
Love it; thanks for creating this!
Thanks all for translation help - I’ll hopefully get round to incorporating them all this coming weekend. I think the idea of having opacity on the text and allowing for a background image is great so will try to add that feature too.
Wow Simon.
This is fabulous.
I am a PC user, and now absolutely gutted!!
how does this help save my screen?
wOw! I Love it! Thanks fOr sharing this beautifuL CLOck :)
awesome idea, but i have to ask.. dont you think this will burn the screen?
donal - it doesn’t help save your screen. tom - screen burn was only an issue years ago when we all had CRT screens. Screensavers are just a vanity thing now and in general don’t perform any useful function.
or if your running a plasma like i am…
If you’re worried about burn-in, please don’t use it. I’ve added a burn-in section to the page as I think it’s a fair comment!
pc version? pretty please?
Yeah - what Alon said!
Is there a PC version in the pipeline??
Pretty pretty please?
Mmm no PC version in the pipeline at the mo. I have a Flash version of the clock that could be converted to a ScreenSaver if anyone wants to volunteer to convert it with something like ScreenTime? Doesn’t handle multiple languages though…
Bloody brilliant. thanks.
I am willing to give the Flash to ScreenSaver conversion a shot.
Bo - thanks for the offer of help. I’m going to work on the Flash one a little more so it can read all the translated xml files I have. Will be in touch when it’s done (few weeks probably!). Would like to release something good.
I’ll 4th the request for a PC version. This looks brilliant.
@ Bo. Woo hoo!
Sorry I couldn’t help Simon .. I’m one of those damn end users only!! ;p
Superb! A wonderful idea for us type-heads. Surely this is the only screensaver in the world that has adjustable typography controls?! This is gracing my desktop just as surely as my “your type makes me sick” (collapse-design) t-shirt adorns my bod.
:D
Love it, looks fantastic. Blogged; http://reformrevolution.com/
Our new favorite!
I would appreciate any form of this for Windows. I generally don’t use screensavers, but this is too good to pass up.
Thank you.
Definitely a really nice screensaver! I spotted a little bug in the french translation though : the word “dimanche” (sunday) is doubled…
it’s really tuff to wait for the Windows version!!!
wow, this is great! awesome idea! thanks for turkish version.
Love, love, love it! :)
Excellent! One of the finest screen savers ever. Maybe it’s my love of typography - anyway, I tumblelogged it…
I want this for Windows too!
sweet, thanks from germany!
Windows version would be very much appreciated!
props for the great idea!
So great, thanks. I used the gray on gray with black highlighting I saw in the flickr group. Fantastic.
sweet. thnks. im grabbng this ^_^
Great screensaver, I wonder if you have plan to put Indonesian language…
The best ‘minimalistic’ screensaver I’ve ever had.
Conjures a smile on my face. :-)
Big THANKS!
Yz
Cool clock.
Couple of minor niggles, the ‘,’ after the months is highlighted and this just looks wrong to me.
When doing right justified text the previous line jumps about when the highlighting switches from the first term to the second term
Cool saiver…
for Windows please? :)
Great idea. I really love it - especially the customizable typesetting and colors. Good work.
very, very cool and elegant!
Exzellent Screensaver. Thank you!
Beautiful screensaver!
One problem…it’s 1 hour in advance, even if my system clock is ok…
Best screensaver yet. would be a good idea if we could customise it so that we can only display the date e.g. and remove the time.
well done!
Brilliant, stylish and very original idea! The 18 languages means I can have it in French which is great. But (yeah I know: nitpicking and all that), could you add an option for a 24 hours format, or even better, guess it from the system’s locale like you guess the language. Sorry if it’s already been asked for but I didn’t see any mention for it in the previous comments…
Excellent all around.
How about an option in Languages for a randomly-chosen language each time it starts?
Sorry, it’s me again. I just noticed that there’s a small problem with the French version. You use the plural of the unit for the zero quantity like in English, while in French 0 and 1 are not using plural form. BTW this is even worse for (at least) Russian and Polish AFAIK. Check gettext doc, that’s where I learned about this. http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/html_node/Plural-forms.html
Very nice screen saver, using this one from now on! :)
Please, pour Windows, por favor, s’il vous plait, bévakasha,
Thanks to everyone for the kind comments and who has noticed all the errors in translation and the +1 hour bugs… I am slowly working on a number of new translations and should be able to post a corrected version over the weekend. This version also has a random option and you can also set a background image if you want (for gradients or whatever you like).
Very nice! A beautiful screensaver. One thing about the Swedish translation: the names of the months are not spelled with a versal in the beginning, i.e. “maj” not “Maj”. Otherwise, it’s perfect!
this is great. hebrew would be awesome!
cool ss, how about making it compatible with real computers?
Apologies if its been mentioned, I wondered about possibly avoiding the screen burn issue by occasionally shifting the clock by a pixel or two every so many seconds.
My plasma does this for TV, shifts by one pixel every 30 seconds I think it is - you don’t notice it unless you’re paying very close attention :)
Excellent screensaver, enjoying it!
Cheers
Richard
I’ll second the last comment. You could have it (slowly, or not so slowly) sliding all over the screen, given that the space it occupies is smaller than the real estate. Anyway thank you for this great idea!
COOL !!
coold idea with professional implementation
I’d Digg it.
Just wondering, does anybody know what software was used to create this? quartz composer? or something that uses flash?
thanks
Awesome screen saver! makes me want to not let my computer sleep just so i can see it!
Anyways, I have a request that’s a little different.
Is there any way other statistics could be integrated into the free space on the screensaver? Such as a stock ticker, netwrok usage, new mail, something along those lines? I know its different, and I know nothing about coding, but it would be very very cool. Either way, this is my new screensaver.
Thanks a lot.
I can’t seem to be able to change the typography from the default Helveltica Bold. Please help.
Beautifully done. Especially appealing to us typography folks. One corrections: your “kerning” slider is actually better stated as “tracking” or “letterspacing”. Kerning is the space between two specific pairs of letters, not the letterspacing as a whole.
Very nice! One suggestion, though I don’t know if it’s possible: could you include support for different configurations for Macs with multiple monitors? I.e. Different layout on each?
Thanks!!
great savr — thanks. Any chance of getting a 24-hr clock version? My system clock is set that way, so would love to see the savr show me: “twenty-two thirty-seven” instead of “ten thirty-seven pm” etc
~ Keith
everybody wants something for nothing don’t they.
love the screensaver.
one thing you should do though
in the layout field have it so you can add pics (from a folder or flicker) so you can have the tie on one side and a slide show on the other
[...] kurzem habe ich surfenderweise einen ziemlich interessanten Bildschirmschoner gefunden: quasi eine typographische Uhr. Das interessante sind auch die unzähligen Einstellungsmöglichkeiten. Hintergrundfarbe, [...]
Congratulations…A Beautiful Job.
I left out a question. Is there any way it can be downloaded for use on the desktop instead as a screen saver? Thank you
great work! though the swedish version seems to select the wrong day of the week..
Beta version posted at top of page. Fixes most of the bugs I know about, adds some more languages and features. It’s a work-in-progress so maybe contains some new bugs too…
i’d like the highlighted words to be aligned along a vertical center axis, and then the grayed out words to cycle word by word, line by line. i would like to make this in qc myself, but haven’t got the time. is this qc? could you provide us with the qtz?
To answer my own question about putting it on the desktop…I found an application, Moving Desktop 0.3 - FREE DOWNLOAD, at softpedia.com, that allows you to do this.
nice. thanks! :)
Would you mind if I link this page on my blog? Love this Screensaver.
Word clock is Screensaver on my MAC, now.
So Unique~
[...] + Helvetica - numbers = The Word Clock [...]
genius
man. i feel like getting a macbook pro just for this screensaver. =)
keep it up! GOOD JOB!
Great!!!
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Very Stylish, very light : Bravo !
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Absolutely wonderful gadget!
Can’t wait for the Windows version!!
Hurry, please!
Well done!
Joppe
I would love to see this ported to Linux. This clock looks absolutely gorgeous. Please let me know if there is anything i can do to help.
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Beautiful idea, beautiful implementation, congratulations Simon.
But (there is a but?) - some feature suggestions:
* Add a possibility to save/load the settings - especially the sliders are a bit tricky, if you are not satisfied with your choices, then it’s hard to get back to the orginal settings. Plus it would be cool to get the settings of some cool flickr picture of wordclock
* A free-floating, resizable preview would be a great help for subtle typographical adjustments. The built-in preview is overlapped by the configuration dialog and it is too small, anyway.
* Maybe add a “donate” button to your site for people who would like to show their appreciation.
nd
[...] 29 Giugno 2008 di ispike Lo conoscevo già come applicazione per iPod, ma ho appena scoperto che WordClock c’è anche in versione screensaver per computer. La trovo un’idea geniale e visto che [...]
I’d love to see vertically oriented text and this would look great in Japanese.
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Thanks a lot bro!! you provide Indonesian language. Btw what is your Nationality?
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This is just brilliant - simple, beautiful, and useful at once. I’m just not sure which I prefer: on my PowerBook or my iPod touch!
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[...] Free Screensaver: Word ClockWord Clock is a typographic screensaver for Mac OS X. It displays a fixed list of all numbers and words sufficient to express any possible date and time as a sentence. Word Clock displays time by highlighting appropriate words as each second passes. The screensaver is highly customizable. Mac only. [...]
hey.. the screen server is perfect. but u have something to fix..!!
in the seconds… u add the second “0″ , and take off the second “60″
i think that is wrong.. !
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Thanx and greetings from India !
In fact it doesn’t exist the brazilian language, in Brasil they speak Portuguese but with some differences, so the best way to say it would be somenthing like “Portuguese (Brasil)”.
I don’t want be a smart ass saying this, but i thoough I should say…
And by the way, i love the world clock screen saver.
true simplicity & true brillance! but…
…where is the “Oh-five”…?
It’s missing!
Yes! The early PC version is missing some words, I admit it. I am working quite hard on a new Mac and PC version so watch this space…
Great! I forgot to mention that it was the PC version yeah…
Great work man!
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