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April 9, 2009

Find the Sender's Local Time in Gmail

Gmail Labs added a very useful feature for those who receive messages from all over the world. "Sender Time Zone" shows a green phone icon if it's appropriate to call the sender and a red phone icon if it's not a good time for calling (the icon is actually an Unicode character). Click on "show details" and you'll also see the local time of the sender.

"Message headers always include the time sent and often include time zone info too. We use that information to show you these icons. If the time zone isn't included for a given message, this Labs feature won't display anything," explains Gmail's blog. Google saves your timezone in your Google Account and it can be changed from this page.


You can also use Google search to find the time in a certain location.

9 comments:

  1. In Chrome I'm getting s coloured rectangle, in Firefox I'm getting a rectangle with a number in. I'm taking it thats because I'm on English (UK) as my language and the unicode character isn't being supported right. They are still read and greeen, and it does still let you see what their local time is.
    Peter

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  2. It is not working for me though I have enabled the feature.
    I also tried re-login again but still not working.

    Weird.

    hongjun

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  3. It shows the "do not call" icon for all (Test it). Not working.

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  4. Be even better if it linked to Google Voice and offered to call your phone and then the contact's phone.

    I am forced to use Outlook/Exchange at work, and it's very nice that Outlook can offer me a choice of calling a person, or IMing that person.

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  5. Actually it is more liked "current time there then"

    A message sent from a location during daylight savings time when examined during a period outside daylight savings time will show current time off by one hour.

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  6. its not having the true time.
    Actually I can't understand how it can understand what's the time in sender's location.

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  7. "Actually I can't understand how it can understand what's the time in sender's location."

    That's pretty easy and it's already explained in the post: "message headers always include the time sent and often include time zone info too." Check the headers of a message and you'll find information about the local time, something like "-0700 (PDT)".

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  8. It doesn't work at all for me.. I get the red phone on everyone, even when it's broad daylight and we are in the same timezone and they just sent a mail 10 minutes ago...

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