by Ian Skellern

As much as we try to cover all the horological news that matters on Quill & Pad, despite our best intentions we just can’t write about absolutely everything.

Luckily, though, we don’t have to because − and please whisper this softly to yourself − there are other horologically-focused blogs out there . . . and a few of them are very good.

And, yes, I hear you saying that it’s all very well having quality content spread over multiple platforms, but who has the time, not to mention the finger strength, to be click, click, clicking all over the internet?

If only somebody could develop a platform to aggregate all of the news from the best watch blogs so it can all be viewed in one place.

The Watchville app newsfeed

Introducing Watchville

Well, somebody did develop a platform that aggregates all of the news from the best watch blogs in one place. That somebody is Kevin Rose and the platform/application is called Watchville.

Watchville founder Kevin Rose

If you’ve spent more time studying watches than technology, you may not have come across Kevin Rose before, but he first came to prominence for co-founding Digg, a news aggregate platform that calls itself the home page of the internet. Rose has an impressive investment record in tech companies, having made early personal investments in Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and Square, and is a venture partner at Google Ventures.

Rose has a company called North Technologies that develops mobile and social platforms and apps. Having been bit by the watch bug himself, it wasn’t a stretch for him to ask North Technologies to create a news aggregation platform for watch aficionados, and Watchville was born.

The “time” section of the Watchville app

Watchville offers a bit more for the horophile than just the latest news and articles:

*  The precise time to one-hundredth of a second, which is averaged from a number of atomic clocks and time servers for maximum precision. My Watchville app is indicating that it’s accessing 19 servers at present.

*  In a nice touch, the app chimes (though slightly deadened for some reason) the last few seconds of each minute.

*  Day, date and year.

*  Phase of the moon.

*  Next leap year (2016 if anyone’s asking).

*  UTC or Universal Standard Time, which was previously known as Greenwich Mean Time or GMT (though the time is calculated differently for UTC).

And, importantly, especially as the platform grows with more blogs added, you can select which of the digital platforms on offer to display (and adjust font size).

All in all, the app is fairly minimalistic, but with practical, easy-to-use functionality that is sure to expand as Rose learns more about what his audience is looking for.

Home page of the Watchville website

Rose is a watch collector himself and (like many of us) has a voracious appetite for ever more horological knowledge. He expects Watchville to make finding that knowledge easier.

You can download Watchville from iTunes for the iPhone only at present. The iPhone app also works well on my iPad, and Rose told me he is working on a dedicated iPad app.

Watchville is also available for Android. And if you are an early adopter who already has the Watchville app, make sure that you update to the latest version as it has significantly improved functionality . . . and Quill & Pad!

For more information, please visit www.watchville.co.