With the creation of designer James E. Murphy's clock web app, What colour is it?, asking for the time is now the same thing as asking for the color. His project translates the current time into its corresponding hexadecimal color code. So, noon (12:00:00) is interpreted as #120000, which is a dark (nearly black) shade of red. Murphy's clock ticks on with every second and each color is slightly different.
Even though the hypnotic app features gradual hue changes, even less than a minute can yield a complete color transformation. Pine green becomes a slate blue and on from there. Depending on the time of day, you'll observe a lot of the same color family because the hexadecimal code doesn't change too much. Still, it's interesting to see how the hues progress over the course of the day.
If you're thinking that this would be a great screensaver, you're not alone. Jonic Linley turned What colour is it? into one for the Mac OS.
What colour is it? website
James E. Murphy website
via [Laughing Squid]
