Feb

23

“Call In Time” widget

Posted by AlexTG

February 23, 2007 |

It’s time to reveal next ConceptDraw Lab product.

“Call In Time” is a dashboard widget that detects place you are calling to and, what is more important, local time. Why do you need this thing? You know the answer if you had ever made a call to the other side of the world. What could be worse for your business partner or client, than a phone call at 12 PM? Definitely, the phone call at 2 AM :)

To avoid the situations like that, download this widget as our tech support and sales personnel did.

“Call In Time” user guide:

  1. Click this big black button with the white phone bellow

  2. As soon as download is completed, unzip the widget and install it. By the way, don’t forget to choose KEEP button ;)

  3. Enter an International phone code in the following format:

    • +[country code][area code]. Whole phone number is not necessary
    • [area code] if you are calling to US or Canada

  4. Watch what is local time in the place you are calling to and what time zone it belongs to. To make widget not only convenient, but also pleasant to use, we added some nice animation (sun, moon, sunset, dawn).




    5. Comments

    17 Comments so far

    1. tsm on February 28, 2007 11:35 am

      I didn’t have a chance to use it yet. I will make use of it in the next couple of days.

    2. ddupmul on February 28, 2007 7:29 pm

      Nice idea. Not sure what is happening though. I enter 714, which is in the same time zone as I am, and it says that the time there is 5:24am. However, the current time is 9:24am. I tried it on 541 and 415 too, both of which are in my time zone.
      Then I tried 212 (NYC) and it states that it’s 8:24am (should be 12:24pm)
      I then tried +45 (Denmark) and it says 6:24pm (which is correct).

    3. AlexTG on February 28, 2007 10:15 pm

      The problem can be in your local time settings. It looks like there are shift for 4 hours from real time.

    4. rmleonard on March 1, 2007 7:58 pm

      I can’t seem to get it to work either -

      my timezone in system prefs shows Los Angeles and PST

      all of the area codes i know are all 4 hours off..

      is the /etc/timezone file on the Mac supposed to be a binary?

      ls -lah /etc/localtime
      lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 39 Jul 11 2006 /etc/localtime -> /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles
      tells me I am looking at that tz file…

      running this - I get this from my computer

      >>>zdump GMT PST
      GMT Thu Mar 1 17:06:13 2007 GMT
      PST Thu Mar 1 17:06:13 2007 UTC

      I can also look at this:
      zdump -v /etc/localtime | grep 2007
      /etc/localtime Sun Mar 11 09:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 01:59:59 2007 PST isdst=0
      /etc/localtime Sun Mar 11 10:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 03:00:00 2007 PDT isdst=1
      /etc/localtime Sun Nov 4 08:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Nov 4 01:59:59 2007 PDT isdst=1
      /etc/localtime Sun Nov 4 09:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Nov 4 01:00:00 2007 PST isdst=0

      that shows that I have a current timezone info file for the area

      the javascript in the widgie calls
      var url_start =’http://decoder.americom.com/decoderscript?Search=’;
      var url_end =’&submit=Search+World+Wide’;

      is that the best/easiest way to find area codes/call codes?

      still trying to find out how/where it calls localtime… and determines offset to GMT -

      only had a few minutes so far…

    5. AlexTG on March 2, 2007 11:04 am

      I’ve just updated the widget. Do you still have any problems?

    6. rmleonard on March 6, 2007 6:20 pm

      I still get 4 hours off -
      it is 8:15AM here and if i type in my own area code - it shows 4:15AM

      and it seems consistent with all US area codes

    7. AlexTG on March 6, 2007 7:00 pm

      We will try another way of solving this issue. Please, check for updated version tomorrow.

    8. rmleonard on March 14, 2007 1:25 pm

      Now showing an hour off when reading my area code - it could be that the program has an internal timezone issue - Pacific Daylight Time changed this year….

    9. Kevin on March 23, 2007 6:19 pm

      Area codes 506 and 902 are for Atlantic Canada which should be one hour ahead of eastern canada where I am (e.g. 613, 905, 416) - but they’re showing the same time.

    10. Kevin on March 23, 2007 6:28 pm

      Did another test. Typed in my own area code (and my locale is set correctly), it showed it an hour earlier.

      It seems this widget does not take daylight savings time into account.

    11. AlexTG on March 23, 2007 8:32 pm

      Thank you Kevin. I have an idea what causes that problem and will try to fix it on Monday.

    12. Henry on June 11, 2007 12:59 am

      With the comments made by others above and the references to “unzip” after an install, and the apparent conflict between “bellow and below” in your instructions such as “Click this big black button with the white phone bellow”, I wonder whether or not this widget functions properly with MAC OS 10.4 and above. Does it? Also, does the distinction between Area Code and Time Zone get as confused as it appears from respondent “ddupmul” in his comments of Feb 28, 2007. Is the program able to accept the name of a major city rather than the more cumbersome international numbers such as +38044 instead of “Kiev?” I listen to radio programs around the world and would like the ability to accurately know what the local (for me) time is when I plug in the home time for the city of origin for the radio program.

    13. Henry on June 11, 2007 1:11 am

      I made a comment specified as #14 on your list. It was reported as being authored at 12:59 AM on your site. Does that mesh properly given your time zone with the actual San Francisco time of 3:59 PM here? That could be a 15 hour difference depending upon whether I am in a zone ahead or behind your zone. Does your widget show us the whether or not the user is in the same Day as the queried time in question, and spcify AM or PM?

    14. AlexTG on June 11, 2007 12:56 pm

      The widget works only with international phone numbers thus you can’t specify city name and get its local time. We will take your comment into account when updating this widget.

    15. dmitri on July 18, 2007 10:09 pm

      Moscow has recently changed it’s phone code from 095 to 495.

    16. Mick on November 13, 2007 1:54 am

      Tried using the application and keyed in +618 and shows Adelaide and Perth, which are in entirely different time zones.
      Then keyed in a couple more numbers to reduce ambiguity (eg +6188 for Adelaide or +6189 for Perth. It then displays the Territory of Cocos (Keeling) Islands.

      Keyed +64 for New Zealand and it puts it 1 hour ahead of actual time. This is already in daylight savings and therefore is now 2hrs ahead of standard time (GMT +14)???

      Not useable

    17. Dmitri on February 6, 2008 2:56 am

      same happened to me entered +7495 Russia Moscow got Kazahstan instead and time zone was +9 hours instead of +3. so good idea but what’s the point is it’s not working

      Thx

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