I have a weakness for technology. I have a weakness for watches. When you combine the two together, it has a blindingly narcotic effect. I must own one of these things. If you go to the Tokyo Flash web site, you’ll see the incredibly ingenious way this watch tells the time:

The time is displayed in 3 colors. The left side represents the hours and can be easily read by looking at the digits to the left of them. The minutes are displayed in 12 rows of 5, in green, yellow, and red, with each row representing 5 minutes, each light representing a minute. To count the minutes after 15 minutes it is easiest to start by looking at the competed red row(s) and then start counting from there. Each completed red row is a 15, 30, 45, 60 minute indicator.

That’s a little hard to visualize, but if you go to the site, there’s a terrific graphic illustrating how it works.

Outside of the geek-chic appeal here, there is something intellectually interesting about this watch: It innovates a new analog way to tell time. And when you think about it, there isn’t a lot of innovation in this realm. We have the standard analog watch with two hands; we have the hourglass format, where we tell time using gravity and sand. How many other innovative ways of telling time have you ever seen?

Sigh. Sadly, I’m trying to save some coin, so it’s unlikely I’ll actually kick out any bling for this thing.

Snif.

(Thanks to Boing Boing for tormenting me eternally by finding this psychotically cool watch.)