Links That Automatically Convert Timezones
Did the announcement for your last event look something like this:
The door opens at 12:00 noon Eastern. That's 9:00am Pacific, 11:00am Central (sorry, Mountain, not enough people in your timezone for me to list you), 5:00pm GMT (a.k.a. UTC)...
The only thing worse than that mess is to only name your own timezone, leaving the rest of the world to figure it out for themselves (especially if you don't tell anyone what timezone you're in!)
Scratch that. Even worse is when you get the timezone calculations wrong!
This problem has bugged me for a long time. When I lived in the Mountain timezone, it seems like everyone listed Eastern, Central, and Pacific. Now that I'm in Central, some people list Eastern, Mountain and Pacific. What's up with that?
Anyway, a few days ago, I thought of a solution. What if, for example, instead of tweeting about your webinar like this:
The Samurai Ninja Big-G Loophole Lazy-way Webinar begins at 1:00pm Eastern (10:00am Pacific)
...you could do this:
The Samurai Ninja Big-G Loophole Lazy-way Webinar begins http://iaago.com/@1:00pm-5
I call it a "TimeLink". Go ahead and click it.
The page that's displayed automatically converts the time to your own timezone, whether you're in the same country or half way around the world. Also displayed on the page are:
- A countdown timer.
- A link back to the page the person clicked from.
- A form you can use to create your own TimeLinks.
The link can also specify the date, like this: http://iaago.com/@8:00am-5on25Dec2010, and the countdown timer will show the number of days to go.
Of course, TimeLinks are a little less readable than just listing the time, so you might want to do this:
The Samurai Ninja Big-G Loophole Lazy-way Webinar begins at 1:00pm central http://iaago.com/@1:00pm-5
Reader Comment:No worries, good to see that you still human! :-) just checked my mate's link and it is working fine now, and thanks for the quick response, I know that it is holiday season up your way -- Thanksgiving, Black Friday and all. Terry
(join the conversation below)
When linking from a website, the readability of the link isn't an issue because you can do it like this: "The webinar begins at 1:00pm central time".
You can create your own TimeLinks for free at http://iaago.com/@. Please use it the next time you tell me when your event is happening so that I don't have to go through the mental gymnastics of converting to Central time.
November 18th, 2010 at 1:03 pm
I discovered that Twitter massacres the link (since the "@" symbol isn't technically legal in URLs...but web browsers handle it fine). So I've updated the system to accept either an asterisk "*" or an @ symbol. The TimeLink generator gives you both.
November 18th, 2010 at 6:16 pm
G'day Antone,
That is SO COOL! Being an Aussie, and a big webinar fan, this has always been a nightmare for me to try and work out the equivalent times in the Northern Hemisphere, and even a lot of the 'world time' websites screw up all the daylight savings zones. But your system uses a totally different, but obvious when you realize it, method to display local times!
You can bet that I will be sharing your post with everyone who has ever put me through the Hell of trying to work out whether 9PM EST is 11AM here, or 12, or 1PM. This has got to be the best idea in 2010!
Terry
November 18th, 2010 at 7:18 pm
Fantastic post Antone!
I will definitely be using this on my next product launch. I could have used it in the past had I known about it. It would have made my launch so much smoother.
Thanks again Antone.
November 18th, 2010 at 10:22 pm
Terry, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that the first person to comment on this post would be from outside the US, where you probably feel the pain a lot more acutely.
"The best idea in 2010" -- okay, I know that's hyperbole, but especially coming near the end of the year, I appreciate the comment. It's always funny when a movie that comes out in January is called "the best movie of the year". (Okay, that's hyperbole too -- they don't start saying that till February.) I hope TimeLink's live up to their promise for you.
Kelvin, I guess I should have thought of it earlier! Hope it helps out next time.
November 27th, 2010 at 9:04 pm
G'day Antone,
just got a message from a marketer to say that the Timelink site was broken, so i set up the following link to test it, and it looks like there IS a problem with it. Try this link:
http://iaago.com/@4:00pm+11on28Nov2010
or this one:
http://iaago.com/@12:00pm+1on30Nov2010
Terry
November 27th, 2010 at 10:13 pm
Thanks Terry! I've fixed it.
The problem was that the "+" in any links for a timezone east of GMT was getting converted to a space, which my code wasn't checking for. Can't believe I didn't think of that!
November 28th, 2010 at 2:06 am
No worries, good to see that you still human! :-)
just checked my mate's link and it is working fine now, and thanks for the quick response, I know that it is holiday season up your way -- Thanksgiving, Black Friday and all.
Terry