Tutorial - Make a "Reference Times" Lister

In my job as a consultant, I often need to schedule meetings across timezones, and sometimes do not want to struggle with cross-platform incompatibilities between calendar software. There is some excellent software out there for this purpose, namely 1stClock on the Windows platform, or Vela Terra on Mac, but I thought I would roll my own quick solution with Automator channeling some shell script.

Here's how.

Create the Workflow in Automator

First, start Automator, and save the Automator workflow as "Timezone List to Clipboard" or something similar. Add a "Run Shellscript" action, and a "Copy to Clipboard" action under that.

Next set the Shell to "/bin/bash", and paste the following code into the text box:

echo == Reference Times ==

echo -e "Tokyo - \t" `TZ=Asia/Tokyo date "+%Z (%z) %R %a %e %b %Y";`

echo -e "Hong Kong - \t" `TZ=Hongkong date "+%Z (%z) %R %a %e %b %Y";`

echo -e "Calcutta - \t" `TZ=Asia/Calcutta date "+%Z (%z) %R %a %e %b %Y";`

echo -e "Berlin - \t" `TZ=Europe/Berlin date "+%Z (%z) %R %a %e %b %Y";`

echo -e "London - \t" `TZ=GMT date "+%Z (%z) %R %a %e %b %Y";`

echo -e "New York - \t" `TZ=US/Eastern date "+%Z (%z) %R %a %e %b %Y";`

echo -e "Chicago - \t" `TZ=US/Central date "+%Z (%z) %R %a %e %b %Y";`

echo -e "Denver - \t" `TZ=US/Mountain date "+%Z (%z) %R %a %e %b %Y";`

echo -e "San Francisco - \t" `TZ=US/Pacific date "+%Z (%z) %R %a %e %b %Y"`

These lines echo an appropriate text string, execute the date command feeding the same the TZ= modifier, which makes the date command return the current date and time in the specified timezone. The percent this and that at the end are the date format.

Save As an Application

Save As the file to File Format "Application", and drag your .app file to your Dock. Now when you click it, you have a quick way to get text like this into an email for better collaboration.

== Reference Times ==Tokyo -

JST (+0900) 22:39 Thu 17 Jan 2008Hong Kong -

HKT (+0800) 21:39 Thu 17 Jan 2008Calcutta -

IST (+0530) 19:09 Thu 17 Jan 2008Berlin -

CET (+0100) 14:39 Thu 17 Jan 2008London -

GMT (+0000) 13:39 Thu 17 Jan 2008New York -

EST (-0500) 08:39 Thu 17 Jan 2008Chicago -

CST (-0500) 07:39 Thu 17 Jan 2008Denver -

MST (-0700) 06:39 Thu 17 Jan 2008San Francisco -

PST (-0800) 05:39 Thu 17 Jan 2008

Hope this helps someone. Have fun consulting across timezones!