Welcome aboard to Code City

[Jason Dunn]

<a href="http://www.codecity.net">http://www.codecity.net</a><br /><br />The makers of the excellent CityTime application have just signed up as Pocket PC Thoughts sponsors, so I'm pleased add them to the list of companies that help keep this site running. They've also offered a great giveaway of their product, so stay tuned...

[Ed Hansberry]

Woohoo! CityTime is one of those apps that if you work with people in multiple timezones and travel yourself, you simply cannot do without it.

[Sven Johannsen]

Why Ed, haven't you always been the one to defend the interesting way Outlook Calendar treats appointments when you change timezones as perfectly logical? What need would you have of and app that helps you sort it out. :)

[Ed Hansberry]

Why Ed, haven't you always been the one to defend the interesting way Outlook Calendar treats appointments when you change timezones as perfectly logical? What need would you have of and app that helps you sort it out. :)
I staunchly defend the way Pocket Outlook handles timezones. Your PC does it too, and has since Outlook 97 was released. I never need CityTime until I stared needing to keep track if international times. But I mostly use it for flight times. Go look at your itinerary sometime. They (correctly) enter the start time in the timezone of your departure airport and the end time in your arrival airport, but unless you account for timezones, you won't know how long the flight really is. CityTime takes care of that. :)

[Brad Adrian]

My favorite feature of this product is the extra options that automatically appear on your calendar menu. It allows you to very easily select the time zone that an appointment appears in WHEN you make the appointment. There have been some utilities for changing the time zone, but this is much more efficient.

[Rob Alexander]

Why Ed, haven't you always been the one to defend the interesting way Outlook Calendar treats appointments when you change timezones as perfectly logical? What need would you have of and app that helps you sort it out. :)

:roll: And well he should! If you'll just stop and think about the time zone issues involved in moving around the world, there is absolutely no way that a nominal time based system can work. Sure if you hang out in one or two adjacent time zones, you may not see it, but if you travel across the international date line using nominal times, you're screwed. I'd like to see you enter this airline flight from a trip I'm about to take as an appointment in your calendar without a UDT aware Outlook. I leave Auckland, New Zealand at 8:45 pm on day 1 and arrive, 12 hours later, in Los Angeles at 1:45 pm still on day 1. Try entering that without accounting for time zones (unless Outlook now has the ability to take appointments that end before they begin). :wink:

Going back the other way is nearly as bad. You leave LAX around 11:00 pm on day 1 and 12 hours later you arrive in Auckland at 7:00 am on day 3. That might almost work unless you'd promised a contact in Singapore that you'd call him on day 2. With your nominal time system, you'd think you couldn't do that because you'd be in flight on day 2, where in reality you could make that call before you left LAX... but only if your calendar actually knows about time zones and can tell you when you're supposed to be doing something, expressed in your current time wherever you are.

Of course none of that really has anything to do with how useful City Time is, except to note that it helps you handle multiple time zones very easily. To enter appointments in other time zones, MS would have you changing your PPC clock around back and forth just so you know when to enter them. City Time makes it dead easy. City Time works within the internationally accepted time zone system to enter appointments anywhere in the world as easily as entering one in your local time. (MS didn't invent our UDT-based time zone system in case you thought this was all their idea.) :)

And City Time is just plain handy to keep track of when it's okay to phone someone somewhere else. When I'm at home in New Zealand, I have a pretty good feel for what time it is back in the US where the rest of my family lives, but when I'm in my fifth time zone in six days :? , I get totally disoriented about what time it is elsewhere and City Time keeps me straight.

So I guess the bottom line is that, if you use a nominal time keeping system for your appointments in different time zones, you really, really need City Time to help you muddle through without missing too many appointments. But even if you use the full power and flexibility of Outlook's UDT-based calendar, City Time is still a great tool for helping you to manage your appointments, and as a quick reference as to what time it is elsewhere.

Thanks, Code City, for supporting out favorite PPC site! :!:

[numb]

I must admit, I don't get the microsoft time zone thing. :?
Lets say I'm going on holiday to the US west coast, and have booked my return flight, leaving, say 7pm. I want to record that in my Ipaq, so I just put it in, using my current time zone (GMT). When I get to the States, I switch to Visiting Pacific US (GMT -8 ). That changes my flight time entry to 11am..so how do I know its actually 7pm?
Or am I supposed to set Visiting to Pacific US before I enter the flight details? But then, if I set it back to GMT, and someone asks me what time my flight is, it'll be showing as 3am the next day!!
It just doesn't make sense to me! Does CityTime get around this kind of problem?

[Ed Hansberry]

I must admit, I don't get the microsoft time zone thing. :?
Lets say I'm going on holiday to the US west coast, and have booked my return flight, leaving, say 7pm. I want to record that in my Ipaq, so I just put it in, using my current time zone (GMT). When I get to the States, I switch to Visiting Pacific US (GMT -8 ). That changes my flight time entry to 11am..so how do I know its actually 7pm?
Or am I supposed to set Visiting to Pacific US before I enter the flight details? But then, if I set it back to GMT, and someone asks me what time my flight is, it'll be showing as 3am the next day!!
It just doesn't make sense to me! Does CityTime get around this kind of problem?

With CityTIme you tell it you are flying from San Francisco at 7pm and landing in Dallas at 12am midnight. CT will make a 3 hr appointment for you, which is your actual flight time. In SF, your appointment will look like 7-10. In Dallas it will look like 9-12. Both are correct. Incorrect would be making it 7-12 as if you had a 5 hr flight.

[numb]

OK... I can see that the duration of the appointment is OK....but if I'm in Dallas (London really), and want to remind myself what time my flight is leaving SF, its gonna show 9pm, which is wrong!
Maybe how you see this working depends on whether the duration of appointment is more important to you than the local time its booked for, even if you're not currently set to the local time!