Swatch Internet Time (or beat time) is a decimal time concept introduced in 1998 and marketed by the Swatch corporation as an alternative, decimal measure of time. One of the goals was to simplify the way people in different time zones communicate about time, mostly by eliminating time zones altogether.

Instead of hours and minutes, the mean solar day is divided up into 1000 parts called ".beats". Each .beat lasts 1 minute and 26.4 seconds. Times are notated as a 3-digit number out of 1000 after midnight. So, @248 would indicate a time 248 .beats after midnight representing 248/1000 of a day, just over 5 hours and 57 minutes.

There are no time zones in Internet Time; instead, the new time scale of Biel Mean Time (BMT) is used, based on Swatch's headquarters in Biel, Switzerland and equivalent to Central European Time, West Africa Time, and UTC+1. Unlike civil time in most European countries, Internet Time does not observe daylight saving time.

Swatch Internet Time was announced on October 23, 1998, in a ceremony at the Junior Summit '98, attended by Nicolas G. Hayek, President and CEO of the Swatch Group, G.N. Hayek, President of Swatch Ltd., and Nicholas Negroponte, founder and then-director of the MIT Media Lab. During the Summit, Swatch Internet Time became the official time system for Nation1, an online country created and run by children.

Internet time was a common catchphrase that originated during the late-1990s Internet boom. In this period, people who worked with the Internet had come to believe that "everything moved faster on the 'net", because the Internet made the dissemination of information far easier and cheaper. In layman’s terms, “Internet Time” involves efficiencies inherent to digital transactions that are produced by the virtual reality of one product, one product type, or one service provided to consumers from one virtual cash register residing on one server. The amount of time required to conduct simultaneous transactions is reduced to irrelevance, as everything is occurring at one compressed—albeit virtual—location.

Fast-moving developments were therefore said to run "on Internet time." For example:

The meaning (and historical origin) of the phrase "Internet time" strongly parallels that of "New York minute".

Katherine von Drachenberg, best known under her registered trademark Kat Von D (born March 8, 1982), is an American tattoo artist, model and television personality. She is best known for her work as a tattoo artist on the TLC reality television show LA Ink, which premiered August 7, 2007, in the United States and ran four seasons.

Kat Von D was born in Montemorelos, Nuevo León, Mexico. Her missionary parents, father René and mother Sylvia or Silvia Galeano, were born in Argentina, of German descent and Italian and Spanish descent, respectively. Von D has a sister, Karoline and a brother, Michael. She moved with her family to the Los Angeles area at age 4 and grew up in Colton, California. Von D was classically trained in piano beginning at age 6. She particularly appreciates Ludwig van Beethoven.

Von D credits her grandmother, Clara von Drachenberg, as an inspiration for her in music and art, and the Latino culture of Los Angeles as a major influence on her tattoo art and style. She began listening to the Ramones, Misfits and other punk rock bands at the age of 12. She got her first tattoo at 14 and quit school at 16 to become a tattoo artist.

The Fat Boys are a successful American hip hop trio from Brooklyn, New York City, that emerged in the early 1980s. Briefly, the group was known originally as the Disco 3.

Big Buff Love, the Human Beatbox, was a pioneer in beatboxing (using his mouth to create hip hop percussion sounds). He and another contemporary, Doug E. Fresh, popularized beatboxing, inspiring other artists to innovate, including Biz Markie and, later, others such as Rahzel. Attempting to capitalize on the appearance-oriented name of the Fat Boys, another hip hop group dubbed itself the Skinny Boys, and yet another the Fat Girls. The popularity of those groups was mild in comparison, however.

The group's 1984 self-titled debut, The Fat Boys, is considered by many to be an early hip hop classic, with artists like Boogie Down Productions and Redman, among others, making references to the album. For its 1987 album, Crushin', the Fat Boys made a cover version of The Surfaris' hit "Wipe Out" with The Beach Boys singing back-up vocals. The single made it to #12 on the Billboard chart, and #10 on the corresponding R&B listing. The Fat Boys also recorded a version of "The Twist" with Chubby Checker, who performed it originally in 1960.