Thomas Friedman of  ‘New York Times’ says, ‘The World is Flat.’  An excellent read, I bought five copies to own and it so happens that my friends turn out to be their owners.   My only grouse is they all stay continents apart, which brings me to Google and it’s search tools.

As a content provider I am on the net most of the time and my clients/buyers (the nomenclature keeps changing from one freelance site to the other)are often at different locations, in different countries and continents.  It is obvious that they are all in varying time zones. There are times when I would like to seek a clarification from them and then there are times they would like to have a word with me about a ‘comma’ here and ‘an expression there.’  Then there are the potential clients who would like to interview me at their convenient times. Since I believe that the customer is the king and in this case “the client is always right”, I go out of my way to help them.  In the course of professional duty, I also need to post my updates to reach them at their ‘preferred time’. How do I manage to do all that?  My favorite browser is Firefox and I use a nifty little add-on FoxClocks by Andy.

But I also use Google. Google has this excellent search operator that when used shows us the local time in any part of the world. Go to Google.com and in the search box type in “local time: city” without the quote marks and you are immediately given the local time.  Well, you will have to replace the ‘city’ with the name of the place you want to know about. Go, try for example ‘local time Vienna.’

Surprised?  Yes, there are three “Vienna”‘s.  One in Austria and the other two in US of A.  You can also use the search operator ‘current time: city’ and get the same results.

So that’s how I find out the local time in different parts of the world and keep my clients happy by being there with them when they want me to be. Go ahead and make most of the time while you are here! 

(PS – You a bookworm?  Well here are the links to Thomas Friedman and New York Times and his book The World is Flat.  Happy Reading  )

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