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Newsletter March 2010

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timeanddate.com logoMarch 2010

timeanddate.com's New Look

timeanddate.com now has a fresher, newer look and a more modern appeal. However, it still retains all the useful functions that it had before to help people find the information they need about times and dates around the world. The website’s new design was carefully planned and tested, with the goal of being more user-friendly and up-to-date . We will gradually make some more changes to the website’s design, as well as work on making the tools on the site more user-friendly in the weeks and months to come.

Read more about why timeanddate.com opted for a design makeover.

Please feel free to comment on timeanddate.com’s new design by sending an email to: [email protected].

Important Daylight Saving Dates

March and April are important months for daylight saving changes in many countries. Daylight saving time (DST) will either start or end, depending on where you live, for the following places:

For more countries with daylight saving schedules, you can check out the Daylight Saving Time Dates for 2010 on our website.

On another note, don’t forget to switch off your lights at 8.30pm (20:30) in your time for Earth Hour on Saturday, March 27, 2010!

All the Time in the World

by Allan Eastman


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 a 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 .

When Are You?

In South Africa, one old Zulu sends word to his friend in a village 80 kilometres away that he will meet him by the Upside Down Tree at the Full Moon. His friend sets out, walks for 2 days over the tall hills and through the stony valleys of KwaZulu until he arrives at the ancient Baobao tree by the edge of the plain, its root-like upper branches scratching the twilit sky. The old man settles down on his blanket, lights his pipe and watches the stars begin to twinkle into view. His friend will arrive tonight, or tomorrow or the day after. No worry, he will contentedly wait until their rendezvous is fulfilled.

In Western Europe, the sharp buzz of an alarm clock awakens a woman executive precisely at 0545. Simultaneously, a timer turns on her automatic coffee maker. Finishing a light breakfast, she checks the clock on her Blackberry and starts to gather up her things. Twenty minutes later, in business suit and briefcase, she is standing on the platform as the commuter train pulls in at 0700. Two hours later, she buckles her seatbelt as an airplane pushes back from the gate precisely at 0900. Another two hours on, she steps out of a taxi at the office building of her major client, 400 kilometres away. She checks her Blackberry once again as the elevator rises towards the top floor. She is exactly on time for her bimonthly 11 o’clock sales conference.

Two human experiences occurring on the same day last week here on Planet Earth, two very different attitudes of the concept of Time. The first can be called Traditional, based on the flow of seasons and the endless cycle of sunlit days and waxing and waning moons, the second– let’s call it Modern - on the relentless ticking of billions of clocks, all linked to an agreed upon concept of what time it is anywhere in the World, all calibrated and quantified by the precise oscillations of cesium particles in Atomic clocks safely tucked away in prestigious Scientific Institutes.

In some ways, these two experiences encompass the entire History of the Human Race from our earliest moments of awareness as hunters-gatherers in the prehistoric forest right up to the frantic high tech present that more and more characterizes modern existence on our Planet every day. Each human’s life is deeply affected by Time and its measurement but what do most people really know or understand about Time?

What is Time, exactly?

That is what we will be exploring in this space on timeanddate.com, here in the newsletter section. Time is a huge subject but we will try to dissect it into manageable segments every month. We’ll be looking into the concepts of Time and how they have changed with new scientific discoveries and theories over the centuries, we’ll be searching into where our ideas of Time came from and all the apparently strange ways we have decided upon to measure Time.

We’ll see how Time affects and is affected by different Human cultures in the past and the present, we’ll explore the many ways in which we’ve tried to build devices to calibrate and describe Time. We’ll look at the way Time affects our language and our thinking, how it has become deeply engrained into all Earth cultures.

And this just gets us started. Time Paradoxes, Time Travel, Astronomical Time – and 100 other aspects of this strange and wonderful subject of Time. Few ideas are as deeply imbedded into the Human experience and psyche as Time and yet it is one of those ideas that the deeper we search into it, the more elusive it seems to get.

This will start off from my personal exploration, growing out of a lifelong fascination with the subject of Time but I hope that you, the reader, will become involved in the discussion and the discoveries here on the website. .

Read more of Allan Eastman’s article When Are You, found at our guest feature section All the Time in the World.

Message from the Team

Hello and welcome to timeanddate.com’s first newsletter. The goal of this monthly newsletter is for timeanddate.com to get more personal and in touch with people who use our website, which features the World Clock, the Calendar for different countries and years, the Meeting Planner, Daylight Saving Time Dates for 2010, and much more.

If you are reading the newsletter from our website and wish to subscribe to it so that it is automatically sent to your email address on a monthly basis, you can subscribe your email address here.

About Our New Logo

timeanddate.com’s new logo was created in line with the website’s new brand image. The logo is part of timeanddate.com’s focus on being up-to-date with the world today and in the future. Please read timeanddate.com’s rationale for the new logo.

FAQ/Tip of the Month

What time zone is the UK on during daylight saving time?
People looking for the time in the United Kingdom (UK) when using the Time Zone Converter or other tools on timeanddate.com will need to remember that the UK is on British Summer Time (BST), not on Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) during daylight saving time (DST). In 2010, DST starts on Sunday, March 28 in the UK. Find out more about why the UK is not on GMT during daylight saving time.

Did You Know...

...Australia’s Lord Howe Island only moves its clocks forward and back by 30 minutes, rather than a full hour, when daylight saving time (DST) starts and ends? Read more about the time on Lord Howe Island during the daylight saving and non-daylight saving periods.

timeanddate.com on Twitter

"timeanddate.com has been a savior for me when figuring out time zones." Twitter users can now follow timeanddate.com’s latest tweets.

Time Zone News

Time Zone Changes in Antarctica in 2010 The Australian Antarctic Division is seeing some time changes during the southern hemisphere’s summer period ends in 2010.

Paraguay’s Daylight Saving Moves to April 11, 2010 Paraguay has officially changed its daylight saving schedule. The country will now end daylight saving time (DST) not on March 14, which was originally planned, but on Sunday, April 11, in 2010.

Chile Extends Daylight Saving Due to Earthquake Chile’s daylight saving time (DST) has been extended to continue until early April in 2010, due to recent circumstances resulting from an earthquake that occurred on February 27, 2010.

Fiji’s Daylight Saving Ends Early in 2010 Fiji’s Cabinet has moved forward the country’s daylight saving time (DST) end date by nearly one month to Sunday, March 28, 2010.

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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