Use Gmail Sender Time Zone to keep in sync with your contacts

Let’s say you get an angry email from your friend who’s halfway around the world. You receive it in the middle of the day, and you’re baffled as to what you’ve done this time. Was it the blog entry you posted? Or the email that you sent him containing yet another Rickroll? So you’re worried sick. You grab your phone and dial long distance. Little did you know that you called your friend up at 3:00 in the morning there and that little annoyance of his over a Rickroll has become a full-blown argument. Because, well, getting jarred out of a great sleep to talk about Rick Astley isn’t really a nice thing.

Now if you only had a way to figure out what time it was over at your friend’s place so you didn’t have to bug him. Then maybe this stupid argument wouldn’t have started in the first place.

Well what do you know, the Gmail team once again have outdone themselves and have created a new feature I’m sure you’ll love. Called Sender Time Zone, it’ll help you avoid awkward situations like the one described above. You’ll see green phone icons next to people who are probably awake and readily reachable (if it’s between 9:00 am and 6:00 pm in the sender’s local time zone) and red ones next to those who could be sleeping or out of the office.

Need more information about the time your friend is in? Click “show details” and you can see when a message was sent in the sender’s time zone as well as what time it is for them now.

Now you won’t see this info right away, though. You need to activate it first via Gmail Labs: log on to your Gmail account, and scoot on over to the Settings link. And then go to the Labs tab, then scroll down and click to activate Sender Time Zone when you see it. If you’re lazy to go through all that, just click on this link instead.

So, has this new feature saved you from any awkward conversations yet? Tell me about it!