Guessing the time zone from an arbitrary "location" string?

Posted by Thomas on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Thomas
Published on 2010-04-10T19:40:51Z Indexed on 2010/04/10 19:43 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 452

Filed under:

timezone

|

geolocation

|

heuristics

I'm trying to run some statistics over the Stack Overflow data dump, and for that I would like to know the time zone for each user. However, all I have to go on is the completely free-form "location" string.

I'll stress that I'm only looking for an approximation of the time zone; of course, in general this is an unsolvable problem. However, many people fill out their country, state and/or city, which should give a pretty good indication. It's okay if it fails for other cases. It doesn't have to be reliable, it doesn't have to be accurate, it doesn't have to cover all bases.

I don't want to waste too much time on this, so I'm wondering if there is some code out there that can make a reasonable guess. Any language, platform, API or library goes. Any ideas?

© Stack Overflow or respective owner

Related posts about timezone

PostgreSQL timezone does not match system timezone

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I have several PostgreSQL 9.2 installations where the timezone used by PostgreSQL is GMT, despite the entire system being "Europe/Vienna". I double-checked that postgresql.conf does not contain timezone setting, so according to the documentation it should fallback to the system's timezone. However… >>> More
.NET Get timezone offset by timezone name

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hello, In database I store all date/times in UTC. I know user's timezone name ("US Eastern Standard Time" for example). In order to display correct time I was thinking that I need to add user's timezone offset to UTC date/time. But how would I get timezone offset by timezone name? Thank You! >>> More
Building TimeZone object in Java

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I build a Java TimeZone object using the TimeZone String like GMT-8,GMT,PST,EST etc. This did not consider whether the timezone is daylight saving enabled or not.Now there is a requirement to include this check and instead of giving the input as PDT or EDT the daylight saving is given as a seperate… >>> More
Running Webapp on Mac in UTC (either changing MacBook timezone or tomcat timezone)

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
To run my web app, I need to set my timezone to UTC on my MacBook. I can do this temporarily by opening a Konsole and entering sudo ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/UTC /etc/localtime However, my timezone returns to normal when I restart my machine! Any advice? Edit : The response to this question… >>> More
Setting session timezone with spring jdbc oracle

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hello I have a spring/jdbc/oracle 10g application. The Oracle server database timezone is set to GMT + 2 JVM timezone is GMT + 2 (even though it doesn't matter in my case). I have a stored procedure that performs some date operations. The problem is that session timezone is different(GMT) than database… >>> More

Related posts about geolocation

Which Devices Support Javascript Geolocation via navigator.geolocation ?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
The iPhone supports geolocation in mobile Safari via the following call: navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition( function(pos){ var lat = pos.coords.latitude; var long = pos.coords.longitude; }, function(){ /* Handler if location could not be found */ } ); I'd like to build… >>> More
iPhone - Native App GeoLocation VS Web App GeoLocation

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Here's my situation; I've built a very simple web app that looks up a users location and plots it on a Google map. Here's my code: http://pastebin.com/d3a185efd When I test it, my location is detected as being = 500 meters from where I actually stand. BUT When I open up Google Maps or Gowalla… >>> More
user disallowed geolocation - notify user second time

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
When trying to get geolocation on iPhone the first time - I declined. Every other time I want to get the location (before another reload of the page) I get no response (no error and no success): navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition( function (location) { ig_location.lat = location… >>> More
How to get my geolocation in bash

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I am looking for a good geolocation api to use from bash. I want this call to return at the very minimum the name of the city I am in, and the state. I imagine that there must be some site I can curl, or some scripting language that has a package that works. The machine does not have a GPS, but it… >>> More
Geolocation Firefox accurate than iPhone Safari?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I just tested Geolocation on Firefox 3.6 and iPhone Safari (os 3.1.3), the result is interesting, firefox is more accurate than safari. any one got idea how to make iPhone Safari result more accurate. this is the code for testing: navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(handler, {enableHighAccuracy:… >>> More