We COULD all work in UTC and un-learn the weird system of hour offsets
and timezones. This would be convenient for people at a distance, since
it would be simply a matter of stating availability hours, rather than
giving someone hours AND a timezone and making them do the math. If I
say that I'm available for an hour at 22:00 UTC, that works out anywhere
on the globe. But do you know what timezone "CDT" is? When's "17:00 CDT"?
Seems like an issue that could be solved by some simple tech that I'm surprised Apple and Google haven't really implemented.
My sister is a "world traveler". I have no idea what country she'll be in next week. If I decide to call her, I have no idea what timezone she'll be in...let alone what "normal sleeping hours" are for her when she's jet-lagged after a 14 hour flight.
I just call her phone and see if she answers.
I think just about every smartphone has a rudimentary "do not disturb" feature built in. My Google phone automatically switches to DND when it's on the charging stand after 10 PM and turns off when I pick it up in the morning.
The multitude of chat apps have presence. Online, available, free to chat, busy, unavailable, offline, do-not-disturb.
Why doesn't that exist for phone numbers? Create a public queryable server that shows a status for a phone number. Set your status to some pre-defined value or make a custom status:
{
status: "doing my taxes",
do-not-disturb: true,
emergencies: true,
typical_availability: {
start: "14:00:00 GMT",
end: "04:00:00 GMT",
}
}
I know FreePBX has presence support internally for extensions. Come up with a standard, integrate it with cell phones and you've solved interrupting people because you don't know what arbitrary time numbers and offsets they are using.
Android and iOS could have a 'master switch' on every phone. Set your status and all your various apps can pick up that status including voice calls.
Android (and I'm sure iOS has it too) provides a way to say "these contacts can override DND".
All that's left to solve is in-person stuff...which already currently sucks.
"My flight leaves at 6 AM local time and lasts 90 minutes, but I'm crossing 3 timezones heading west...so you need to pick me up at...uh....4:30 AM your time? Oh wait....are you currently in DST or not because we don't do DST here, but I think you do....so you either need to pick me up at 4:30 AM or 3:30 AM...I'm not sure....what's your time is it now? Ok, it's 5 AM my time and 7 AM your time, so no DST, so...uh...but next week your zone is switching to DST but we're already on it..."
vs
"My flight leaves at 06:00 zulu, lasts 90 minutes, so I'm landing at 7:30 zulu. See you then."
For the record, I was always told DST was implemented because of farmers.
I'm a farmer and I hate timezones. I just wake up when the rooster starts crowing, and no one goes out to adjust him twice a year for DST.
-A