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Newsletter July 2010

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timeanddate.com logoJuly 2010

Easier Search for World Clock Users

Searching for a World Clock city or town has just become easier, now that we’ve added a search box on the page. We've also reduced the number of links on the page to avoid repeating links that are already in the navigation. The search box includes a drop-down menu that comes up with suggestions when you start typing your keyword in the search bar. The search field will also be shown on each page for every World Clock place.

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For example, if you are searching for the time in London, you can type the first few letters “Lon” in the search box. A drop-down list of places will automatically appear, showing places that best match these letters. The list of options will include London in England, East London in South Africa, London in Ontario (Canada), and so on. This search field also has feature tips.

You can also add the World Clock Search to your browser. You can read instructions on how to add the World Clock Search to your browser if you are using Mozilla Firefox 2+ or Internet Explorer 8+.  You may need to upgrade your browser to include the World Clock Search in your browser.

timeanddate.com Photo of the Month

Do you have a great picture from a past eclipse or a unique way of tracking time? Get involved with the timeanddate.com team by submitting your personal time and date related picture to be our featured Photo of the Month. 

Share your experiences with our readers from all over the world by sending in your personal picture to timeanddate.com. You can submit any time and date related picture such as eclipses, clouds, clocks, or calendars that can be featured on our next newsletter. 

Submit your photo to [email protected] and check out next month's newsletter to find out if your picture is selected to be timeanddate.com's Photo of the Month.

Note: By submitting a photo to the newsletter's Photo of the Month section, you give timeanddate.com permission to publish your photo in our newsletter, which is found on our website and sent via email to readers. This also gives us the right to use your name and your town or city as a way of identifying you as the person submitting the photo. Please read our Disclaimer for more information.

Monthly Poll

A monthly poll in each newsletter lets readers voice out their opinions on various topics related to information on our website.

July Poll

This month’s poll gives you the chance to tell us what you think about our new Facebook page. If you are having troubles with the vote function below, you can also vote online.

Question: Will you add timeanddate.com as a favorite page on Facebook?

Previous Poll Results

You can view the previous poll results online for last month's poll question "Which of these services do you like most on our website?".

All the Time in the World

by Allan Eastman


Making It In The Big Time

Allan Eastman Allan Eastman left behind his successful career as a Film and Television Director and Executive Producer to travel the world. He has visited over 100 countries on all six continents. He spends most of his time reading, writing and thinking about things. He is an amateur historian, a music archivist, a reasonable chef and a seeker after happiness .

Time For The Stars

Not so long ago, we were traveling around enjoying all the great natural beauties of South Africa. We had come to the eastern part of the Orange Free State, hard up by the soaring mountain ramparts of Lesotho and were spending the night in a gorgeous area called the Golden Gate. We had camped in a grassy meadow high up in a box canyon, surrounded on three sides by one of the great kopjes, a flat topped butte or mesa, its sides carved and sculpted by the ancient erosions of wind and water.

The locals had assured us that there were no lions or other major predators reported in the vicinity so we were relaxed as we settled in for the evening. It was a spectacular show.

First, the Sun sank down low over the antique landscape, lighting up the west in a phantasm of pastel oranges, scarlets, mauves and indigos. Just after it disappeared, the fabled green flash shot across the whole horizon. Then, night fell with that startling suddenness as it does in Africa.

Stars popped into view.

We were at about 2,000 meters elevation, over a mile up in altitude and far from any ambient light sources. The stars blazed with a steady intensity in the thin air, seeming so close overhead that you could almost reach up and touch them. And there were so many. The Southern sky is a continuing fascination to anyone raised in the Northern Hemisphere - its unfamiliar patterns only relieved by the comfortable sight of the Hunter, Orion hanging low above the world’s edge. It was difficult to pick out the Southern Cross and Great Magellanic Clouds in the sheer profusion of distant blazing Suns. The star light was so strong that it cast vague shadows across the landscape.

We lay back on our blankets watching the incredible celestial light show. It’s at moments like these when we really feel our connection with the vast Universe we are a part of - when we can contemplate the regal beauty of the night sky and sense the immensity of existence all around us. We are awed by the scale of the cosmos yet feel oddly connected to the entirety of creation. It gives both a tremendous excitement and a calm serenity to our human spirits.

We are traveling in Time as well. The light from the stars we are observing left their sources hundreds or thousands of years ago. As it reaches us here on this South African plateau, we are looking deep into the past. Perhaps some of these stars don’t even exist anymore, perhaps one has exploded into a Supernova around the time when Copernicus or Galileo were peering into their telescopes, trying to make sense of it all. The news just hasn’t reached us yet.

Later, a brilliant ¾ Moon rose over the kopje, flooding the landscape with luminescent silver light bright enough to read by and reflecting green or orange off the reflective eyes of small animals skulking curiously around our perimeter.

The next morning, I climbed up on the base of the sheer cliff around us in the fragile early light. In the weather beaten face of the rock, I found a thin seam, about 20 cm deep, embedded in the strata and running across its entire length. Unlike the hard stone above and below it, this seam was grainy and kind of sandy, easy to pull loose with your fingers. And strewn throughout this sandy layer were thousands of fossilized shells of tiny sea creatures, perfectly preserved in all their detail.

Here, at about 6,000 feet above sea level and locked into a mountain side was the remains of an ancient sea floor. This was another story told in Time - of our own planet and of its formidable past. How many tens of millions of years ago did these tiny creatures sink into the muddy bottom deep under water to lie there until I dug them out of this wall of solid rock?

That day, with the stars and the shells, cast a powerful effect on me. It really taught me to consider my own existence within the awesome scale of the Universe and the epic of Time that is the life of our own home, Planet Earth.

So, let’s go exploring into those huge numbers of Time that have led to our own existences in the apparent here and now. Let’s try to trace how humans have come to quantify everything all around us and attempt to understand our own place in this true, vast scale of Time.

Read more of Allan Eastman’s article Making It In The Big Time, found at our guest feature section All the Time in the World.

Message from the Team

Welcome to the July issue of our monthly newsletter. We hope you enjoyed our previous newsletters, which are found in our newsletter archive online.

Last month we announced our new page on Facebook and the new timeanddate Countdown application available on Facebook. Our readers can now get the latest information and applications from timeanddate.com on Facebook, as well as make comments and take part in discussions that are related to our website. Sign up or log in to “like” our page and share it with your friends.

This month we’ve been busy working on a few developments on the services we offer on our site. We have upgraded our search options when searching for a city or town with our World Clock.

There will be more improvements and new services on our site in the future, so keep in touch with our website for new or upgraded tools to help you with all time and date related information.

We also welcome your suggestions and feedback, as it is important that we make all of our time and date related services work to suit your needs. You can email your suggestions for mobile apps, search tools, and other ideas to: [email protected].

We hope that you enjoy reading the July newsletter.

The Team at timeanddate.com

PS. If you’ve missed previous editions, you can find them on our newsletter archive online. If you are reading the newsletter from our website and want to receive it automatically each month, you can subscribe your email address here.

Don’t forget: please check if our confirmation email has been automatically forwarded to your Spam folder!

FAQ/Tip of the Month

There’s no better way to plan your next vacation than by checking the timeanddate.com Weather forecast to get the latest weather information anywhere around the world. 

You can choose any location around the world by clicking on the city name or by searching for a specific location on the world clock and then clicking on the “weather” tab.  

You can read the temperatures either in Celsius or Fahrenheit, as well as compare the weather forecast with other parts of that country.

Our weather features the latest hour-by-hour forecast, a two-day forecast, as well as a two-week forecast. This detailed information can help anyone plan for any activity during their vacation.

You can get more information about your vacation hot spot by searching for your city using the timeanddate.com World Clock.

Did You Know...

…There is only one Friday the 13th in 2010, and that one falls in August.

The number of Friday the 13ths vary each year and it has been considered as a day of bad luck in several countries for many years.

However in some cultures, Friday the 13th is actually regarded as a lucky day by some people. Many people celebrate Friday the 13th with themes similar to Halloween or hold functions and events to help raise funds for their causes. 

Learn more about the background and symbols of Friday the 13th.

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Have your thoughts about timeanddate.com heard on Twitter. Twitter users can also follow timeanddate.com’s latest tweets.

Time Zone News

UK Parliament Revisits Single Double Summer Time
Parliamentary members in the United Kingdom (UK) will consider having a three-year trial to test the benefits of Single Double Summer Time (SDST) to boost tourism in the UK.

Residents Reject Time Zone Change in North Dakota
Dickinson city commissioner Shirley Dukart is pushing for Stark County, in North Dakota, USA, to move its time zone one hour forward, from Mountain time to Central time.

Get the latest Time Zone News updates on places around the world that make changes to their daylight saving schedule or time zone.

About timeanddate.com

timeanddate.com provides facts and information on time and date.

The website features the World Clock, which includes time zones from many cities around the world, and the Calendar, which has customized features according to country, language, year, and other personal preferences.

These are just two of many useful tools to help people get what they need about times, dates, and other related information worldwide. Our website has more information about the company behind timeanddate.com.
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