[Design] [Scooby] Managing Calendar/Timezone

[John Townsend]

I agree with alot of what Jeremy said. Here was the email I was  
working on before I read his:

Maybe I am wrong, but most people I know don't care about timezones.  
They live and work within the same timezone and don't travel  
extensively for their job. What they do care about is "What time is  
that meeting I have on Thursday?" and the usual answer is 2pm, not  
14:00 PST.

But, when you are a mobile warrior and you are scheduling things with  
people, you do care about timezones. You want to make sure that the  
events that you schedule and attend are properly specified with  
timezones. Then you can adjust your view to display your calendar in  
whatever timezone you are currently in. This means that if you had a  
meeting scheduled today at 2pm PST, when you switch your timezone to  
EST, that event should shift to 5pm EST. This allows you to easily  
make sure that you're not committing to conflicting events at the  
same time (or at least you aren't doing it without knowing it!)

So, I guess to summarize:

1. I think its important that users have a default timezone that is  
their home timezone. When they send requests for meetings, those  
events are encoded with times that include their timezone. This  
easily handles the case of the user that stays home and doesn't travel.

2. I think its also important to allow the mobile warrior to turn on  
the ability to change their timezone view from their default timezone  
to the one they are actually in. That way they won't miss that 2pm  
PST conference call they need to make at 5pm EST.

3. I like the iCal model that Apple puts forth. You set a preference  
that says that I want to turn on timezone support. At that point,  
timezones start to appear and can be changed in views and when  
creating events. Otherwise, it handles it for you.

4. Couldn't we just ask the user to tell us their timezone the first  
time they signin to scooby? (And make it available as a user  
preference so they can change it.)

Anyway, just my two cents. I am the new guy to this conversation, so  
I might not fully understand all of the issues involved.

--> towns




On Apr 19, 2006, at 1:05 PM, Jeremy Epstein wrote:

> Just to chime in, one thing you might want to take into account is  
> "when" a user would actually care. Personally, If I were making  
> appointments  (even if I knew I were traveling) I would not concern  
> t myself with timezone. -- I would always expect my calendar to be  
> in my "home" time zone, or even better, not care about timezone  
> unless it may cause a conflict such as the two circumstances below:
>
> *For me, there are only two circumstances where the timezone I am  
> in matters: *
>    1) if an appointment I am making might conflict with travel  
> across timezones (such as an international flight) This is a very  
> strange case. It means I have an event (airplane flight) that  
> starts in one timezone, and ends in another!
>    2) if I am planning a conference call across timezones, i.e. if  
> I have a phone meeting with a matthew and bobby.  In the conference  
> call case, I would expect the event to list all the times for all  
> the parties involved: (12:00 noon my calendar time, 2:00pm   
> matthews time)
>
> Another example of why I would not want any calendar changing time  
> zones without my explicit control:
>
> I am traveling to a conference in Chicago, and I make an  
> appointment to meet a  colleague for lunch  (12:00), even though  
> (12:00) in Pacific Standard Time(my "home" time zone) would  
> nominally translate to 2:00 pm Chicago time. However, I KNOW I am  
> going to Chicago, and if I set an appointment for 12:00 noon, I  
> would assume its for 12:00 noon whether I am in Chicago or San  
> Francisco. Since chandler has no notion of geographic travel, I  
> don't want it switching time zones on me. Also, I don't want to do  
> the mental math required to set a lunch date of 2:00:pm Pacific  
> Standard Time (my "home" time zone) just to make sure the lunch  
> date appears at noon when I arrive in Chicago and my calendar  
> resets its timezone or I connect from an Internet cafe with a  
> computer whose clock is set to Central Standard Time. Does this  
> make sense?
>
> One last thing, it may simply suffice when traveling to show two  
> clocks on somewhere on the calendar display:  Calendar time, and  
> current geographic time.
>
>
> Apologies for the long note.
>
> Jeremy Epstein
>
>
>
> Bobby Rullo wrote:
>>
>> On Apr 19, 2006, at 12:08 PM, Steve Lewis wrote:
>>
>>> Bobby Rullo wrote:
>>>> Also possibly a 3rd:
>>>> 3. System "guesses" initial timezone based on IP address to  
>>>> location table for initial log in
>>>
>>> [delurk]
>>>
>>> A fourth possibility would be to detect their timezone every time  
>>> they
>>> log in.  If the current client's detected timezone is different,  
>>> ask the
>>> user if he/she would like to adjust the user's timezone, and the
>>> calendar view, to use the detected time zone or continue to use the
>>> stored timezone.
>>>
>>
>> Interesting idea. We'd have to make it annoying proof so that the  
>> dude who always wants their timezone to be EST even though they  
>> are in CA doesn't get harassed.
>>
>>> You can determine the timezone without the IP address to location  
>>> table
>>> which has a significant margin of error.
>>>
>>> As a hint toward implementation, adapt or adopt this javascript  
>>> library:
>>>
>>> http://west.ilrn.com/media/js/systemCheck/timezone.js
>>
>> That only works if the system's time has changed.  Like someone  
>> went to the System Preferences panel and clicked "change timezone"  
>> Might not always be the case for laptop users who are bouncing  
>> around a lot.
>>
>>> and then search java.util.TimeZone for a timezone that has the same
>>> summer and winter DST offsets, then filter that down further by
>>> timezones that switch DST at the amount.  This will often give  
>>> several
>>> possible but equivalent matches.  Programmatically solve this by  
>>> always
>>> choosing one, e.g. the first.
>>>
>>
>> The problem I see with this approach is that it would have to  
>> favor some locale's over others - New York and Buenos Aires might  
>> have the same offset, but which one would appear first in the  
>> list? Americans would be annoyed if Buenos Aires always appeared  
>> first because it begins with B and Argentineans would be annoyed  
>> if New York appeared first just because it's American...
>>
>> Is the margin of error for IP address tables really that bad? We  
>> don't have to get within a block, just within the general region.   
>> I thought they were ok for that, but don't really have any data to  
>> support it either way.
>>
>>
>> Bobby
>>
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