You could display many timestamps simultaneously (every minute this hour, or ±30 minutes, etc.) and use color inversion to highlight the current time.
Or make it a progress bar, where the time moves through the hour or day.
Or maybe show recently-edited Wikipedia pages. Maybe you'll see something interesting.
Or StackExchange hot network questions.
Or check out what productivity/PIM apps were popular on the old 160x160 PalmOS devices, maybe there's inspiration to be had there.