TimeScroller

Yesterday I mentioned Widgets for the Macintosh Dashboard, and I thought today I’d promote one of my favourites: TimeScroller is a simple widget created by Terry Brett for tracking times in up to 20 cities. It’s available as a Dashboard Widget for Mac OSX, as well as an Application for the iPhone and the iPod Touch.

It tracks the time in cities that the user selects (mine has cities selected specifically so that I can keep track of time zones, especially in North America). These times automatically change for daylight savings time.

But it’s far more than just that: That little scroll bar at the bottom allows the user to determine what a given time in one city will be in the other ones, up to roughly three days in advance (the screenshot above shows a sample of this). This is a great way to plan a time to meet-up online with someone in another time zone. For example, if I want to meet friends or family on Skype, I use TimeScroller to determine the relevant time for them. Once I’ve found the times I want, I can click the little email icon in the lower left, and it opens a blank email with all the times listed—you just add your recipient(s) and a new subject line if you want.

If there’s an event you want to plan for that’s more than three days in advance, you can work it out from what TimeScroller displays, or you can use an online time conversion site. I use timeanddate.com, at first because I could remember the URL, but now because of all its features. Among other things, they offer customisable web clocks (and counters) that can be put on any site. I use their web clocks for showing New Zealand time and Chicago time on this blog and my podcast site.

The reason for all of this is, of course, that my family and many friends live in the US. Fortunately, in more than 13 years I’ve only had a couple phone calls in the middle of the night. These tools help us all stay in touch, without late night calls, which makes them great tools for expats.