EricHolsinger.com

When George Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005, he extended Daylight Savings Time by 4 weeks starting in 2007 .

Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia:

The bill amends the Uniform Time Act of 1966 by changing the start and end dates of daylight saving time starting in 2007. Clocks will be set ahead one hour on the second Sunday of March (March 11, 2007) instead of the current first Sunday of April (April 1, 2007). Clocks will be set back one hour on the first Sunday in November (November 4, 2007), rather than the last Sunday of October (October 28, 2007). This section of the act is controversial, primarily because some doubt whether daylight savings results in a net energy savings.

My company, your company and everyone else’s company has had to update their PCs, servers, wristwatches, software, etc … probably costing millions just making this little change. You wouldn’t want your ATM machine or gas pump receipt to come from a machine using the old daylight savings time, would you? I don’t have any interest of getting into the fray over standardization and the fact that nearly the whole rest of the world still has the same daylight savings start and end dates.

Have you thought of how it may affect you, too? What about your phone? Have you got an update for your smartphone, yet? If you have a regular old mobile device, it’s probably no problem. But if you have a Blackberry, Palm or Windows Mobile, you probably need an update.

Here are some helpful links if you suddenly find yourself unprepared:

• Daylight Saving Time update for Palm OS
• Daylight Saving Time update for Windows Mobile (from Palm)
• Microsoft Daylight Saving Time Help and Support Center
• Blackberry Daylight Saving Time 2007