Like most industries, the web design industry is affected by fashions and trends. As soon as one website tries something and coincidentally happens to be successful, people instantly presume the design was the key factor and update their websites accordingly.

Google introduced the minimalist website at a time when most websites were cluttered and suddenly everyone wanted to pull in the Digital Feng Shui experts and de-clutter their websites.

Blogs looked like the future once, and big corporate websites not only needed blogs written in a casual way by the Managing Director Press Office, but this expanded to making the whole website look like a blog, and in some cases putting out key financial information in in blog postings rather than in the investors or financial news section.

Now there is a new trend – the analogue clock.

I am not sure where it started, but the first version of it I saw was on the relaunched UK Parliament website, which apart from being full of bugs had suddenly acquired an animated clock at the top of the page. Despite being fairly universally disliked in the comments section, the website designer was adamant that it would remain.

Recently,  the BBC website received one of its periodic evolutions and gained a clock at the top of the page. Semi-tolerable in that it is in the style of the BBC clock from about two-decades ago, so old people will like it, but I still wonder what functionality it adds to the website.

Recently I noted that the Chinese website, Xinhua had gained a clock – although it looks suspiciously like the BBC clock and even had the same animated seconds hand. The file name is different though, so they have at least tried to cover their tracks if plagiarism has occurred.

This morning, my attention was drawn to a website promoting a course about tea tasting (nice idea, ouch price tag) and it has a clock on the top of the website. Are people timing their tea making process by website clocks I wondered?

These are just the websites I could recall this morning – I’ve seen clocks sprouting up all over the place over the past couple of months.

The clocks are taking over!

As quite a fan of both the art and the science of Horology, and at one time had about a dozen different clocks in my living room, I love clocks – but not on websites.

If I want to see clocks, I’ll go here. I don’t need to be reminded of the time every time I visit a website though.

Please, let the fashion for putting analogue clocks on the tops of websites be a short-lived one.

Update:

It’s been drawn to my attention that the beta version of the new BBC website has dropped the clock. It seems the era of website clocks may indeed be a short-lived one. Hurruh!

Twitter, a place where people chat about their latest cup of coffee (guilty!) or hang on the latest comment from tabloid celeb X (not guilty!), also has a more worthy side to it. Quite a few museums have leapt onto the Twitter bandwagon and use it as a good way of communicating either news about what they are up to, or just random chatter that is relevant to their topic.

For example, the Natural History Museum has a “species of the day” series going on at the moment, along with general natural history chatter – or there is the Imperial War Museum who regularly mention “this day in history” type events from previous wars.

A group have therefore declared that today (1st Feb) is Follow a Museum Day, and Twitter users are exhorted to click the necessary and keep informed with what museums are up to.

I naturally follow about every museum in London I can find, mainly for the purposes of maintaining the events list, but also as some of them are genuinely quite interesting.

For your convenience, you can follow all of the London museums with a single click by subscribing to a list I maintain – @IanVisits/London-Museums.

Alternatively, the full list I follow is below – there is also a list over at the Follow a Museum Day website.

London Museums on Twitter
	BarbicanCentre Barbican Centre | London
	BFHouse Ben Franklin House | 36 Craven St London
	bletchleypark Kelsey Griffin | Bletchley, UK
	britishlibrary The British Library | London NW1 2DB
	britishmuseum British Museum | London
	Burghhouse1704 Burgh House
	DesignMuseum Design Museum | London
	DickensMuseum Dickens Museum | 48 Doughty Street, London
	DulwichGallery Dulwich Gallery | Gallery Road, Dulwich, London
	ExploreWellcome Wellcome Collection | London, UK
	GEFFRYE London
	HornimanMuseum Horniman Museum | Forest Hill, London SE23
	ICALondon The ICA | The Mall, London
	I_W_M Imperial War Museum | London, Duxford, Manchester
	ldnfilmmuseum London Film Museum | County Hall, London
	ltmuseum L T Museum | London
	MuseumChildhood Museum of Childhood | Bethnal Green, London
	MuseumofLondon Museum of London | London, UK
	Musevery Museum of Everything | London
	NHM_London NaturalHistoryMuseum | South Kensington, London
	postalheritage BPMA | London, Essex and Shropshire
	RaggedSchool Ragged School Museum | London E3
	RAFMUSEUM RAF Museum | North London + Shropshire
	sciencemuseum Science Museum | Exhibition Road, London
	SomersetHouse Somerset House
	Tate London, Liverpool and St Ives
	UCLMuseums Central London
	V_and_A V&A | London
	WallaceMuseum Wallace Collection | Central London

A few weeks ago, I had an email from the Met Police’s mailing list letting me know they had opened up a new heritage centre, which sounded quite interesting.

Alas, only open Mon-Fri, and closing at 4pm meant it has taken a few weeks before I could get along to have a look.

It is not the infamous “black museum” that is housed within Scotland Yard and is not open to the public, ever – although a recent opportunity for a visit due to a charity auction for the police’s benevolent fund got my heart beating, until the auction was suddenly cancelled.

Damn.

That disappointment aside, the press blurb looked interesting enough for me to wander along. Informed that the museum is “opposite West Brompton tube station”, I was a bit wary as I know that opposite the station is the Earl’s Court Exhibition Centre. Surely they haven’t taken over that building?

Nope, and the museum is not by any stretch of the imagination “opposite” the station – more like about 200 yards to the left of the station (map link).

Having found the modern looking building, it is not a bad little museum. It was laid out the way I like museums to be done – with glass cases and exhibits on shelves – and a notable lack of garish plastic or “interactive stuff”. A video playing clips designed to encourage you to join the Special Constables is a bit annoying, but not too bad.

A genial chap popped his head round a corner to ask if I wanted any help, and was happy to leave me to browse around alone.

However, it is tiny! I doubt I was in there for more than 15 minutes all told.

Worth a detour if you are in the Earl’s Court area – but not really not worth a dedicated trip to the area for a visit.

There is a leaflet on the table by the visitor signing book for a Friends Association for the archive, and they do say one of their aims one day is to open a dedicated museum. May that day swiftly arrive.

The Victoria & Albert Museum have just sent out their May highlights email which headlines with:

Celebrate Baroque and win a trip to Mexico

I suspect the number of entries to be low, and hence my chance of winning to be high.

http://www.vam.ac.uk/microsites/baroque/competition.html

On a more serious note, while I appreciate it can be difficult for large organisations to change marketing emails at the very last minute, you’d have thought they would have pulled that message as this week is not really ideal for promoting Mexico as a tourist destination.

I spent a rather pleasant 45 minutes at a small museum in the City of London devoted to the history of clock (and watch) making in London. The collection was begun in 1814 by the Clockmakers guild and is said to be the oldest collection specifically of watches and clocks in the world.

It is not that well known as a museum it seems, and was fairly quiet when I was there, with just a few other people wandering around – which makes it easier to see the exhibits, but is a bit of a shame as it is a really well laid out collection and there is a lot to see there – much of it very very rare indeed.

As you go into the museum, there are large explanation panels which go round the room in order (almost) and explain the history of clocks and clock making in London from about the 1600’s until the current day.

I was interested to learn that while today we consider Switzerland to be the height of watch making, in fact London has been historically the center for quality clocks, and Switzerland only gained prominence through “low quality” mass production in the 19th century.

The exhibition is a mixture of the mechanics of clock making – and the jewelry that is so often associated with the cases used to carry pocket watches.

The information boards are a good mix, being quite informative without either being too technical to understand or dumbed down to appeal to 10 year old kids. They also put each part of the history of clock making into context with the history of London so you can understand how great events such as the Great Fire of London or the Civil War affected clock making in the country.

Harrison and Longitude

I was also surprised to see that the museum houses the Harrison’s Chronometer H5 – which was the famous “watch” which solved the problem of measuring Longitude. Having been to the Greenwich Royal Observatory where the other Harrison clocks are displayed, I guess I had presumed that the actually winning clock was there as well. While the earlier clocks are visually vastly more interesting to look at – it is still quite something to see the original winning watch itself on display at this museum.

The story of Harrison and Longitude was dramatised in a very good 3 hour long docu-drama in 2000 staring Jeremy Irons.

Visiting

If you have a spare hour one day and are in the area of the Guildhall, I would recommend this little gem of a museum for a visit. I would say that a visit would last anything from 30 minutes to an hour depending on how engrossed you get in the exhibits.

To find the museum – presuming that you approach the Guildhall from the front main entrance – when you get into the courtyard, turn left and head towards the library. The museum is inside the building on the ground floor. There is an x-ray machine for bags – no photography is permitted alas.

The museum is open Mon-Sat 9:30am-4:45pm. Entry is free.

On the web

City of London webpage about the museum

The Worshipful Company of Clockmakers