Timothy Armes' blog

The Internet’s ability to make the world smaller is astounding.  With a minimum of pain I can arrange on-line meetings with clients and then share my screen to discuss work in progress.   Amazing.

And yet every time I need to do this I end up tearing my hair out.  Why?  Timezones.

I’m based in France and when dealing with clients abroad I need to find a time that suits both parties.  That should be easy, but typically it’s a frustrating and time-wasting experience. Just yesterday I needed to organise a meeting with an American client who informed me that he was available from 9am to 12am CDT. Converting that to Paris time should be simple.  Right?

Wrong.   On-line world-time converters typically just list a bunch of cities – I haven’t a clue which of the American cities in the list happen to to fall within the timezone that I wish to convert from.  If I want to specify a timezone such as “CT”, or an offset such as GMT+2, or even a whole country (if it isn’t split into different time zones), I can’t.

I got so fed up with the situation that I finally took some time out to search the web for a better solution, and I eventually discovered the best online timezone converter I’ve ever seen. Simple, elegant, ad-free.  The author’s accompanying blog article is an excellent read and epitomises my experiences with alternative solutions.

I realized immediately that this would make a great Mac OS Widget, so with the authors blessing I spent a couple of hours making one.  Feel free to download it and simplify your lives too.