I use The Polarbar Mailer from The Polarbar Band (originally J Street Mailer from Innoval) as my primary email program. Time stamps that J Street Mailer generated did not use the correct time zone code during daylight savings time. After a series of email exchanges on the original J Street Mailer mailing list, I wrote an essay, that I have updated a couple of times, that shows the problems facing anyone who wants to use time stamps in an internationally used Java program and also shows how to create time stamps using the correct time zone code (most of the time). Unfortunately, Innoval never bothered to correct their time stamp code, but it was finally fixed shortly after I pointed out both the problem and the solution to The J Street Band (which is what the developers of The Polarbar Mailer were known as before they renamed the J Street Mailer to The Polarbar Mailer and changed their name to The Polarbar Band). Due to a variety of reasons, Innoval abandoned the development of J Street Mailer and donated it to the public domain. The J Street Band was formed to continue the development of the J Street Mailer and is in the process of turning J Street Mailer into a first class free Java email program with a new name: The PolarBar Mailer. To download the current beta version of the Polarbar Mailer, or to join the current Polarbar Mailer mailing list, visit the Polarbar home page via the link provided above or this alternate link.

View an updated copy of my essay on Java and time zones, which first appeared on the J Street Mailer Beta support mailing list.

Download the Java source and class files for my ShowTime applet (see my Java time zone essay for details).

Note: All of my applets can also be run as standalone Java applications.

Download the Java source and class files for my TZ applet, which displays the current time for either the default time zone or for the time zone ID specified on the command line. Usage: "JAVA TZ [time_zone_id]", where the optional time zone ID must be one of the time zone's supported by Java. Usage: "JAVA TZ -?" for help. Usage: "JAVA TZ -? ID" for a short list of the valid time zone IDs. Usage: "JAVA TZ -? TZ" for a list of the valid time zone IDs along with the GMT offset and whether or not daylight savings time is supported. Note: JRE may be substituted for JAVA.

Download the Java source and class files for my STZ applet, which displays the current time for the user defined time zone. Usage: "JAVA STZ gmt_offset time_zone_id [start_month start_week start_day start_time end_month end_week end_day end_time]". Usage: "JAVA STZ -?" for help. Note: JRE may be substituted for JAVA. Examples: "JAVA STZ -08:00 PST" sets up a time zone that is 8 hours behind GMT and does not use daylight savings time. "JAVA STZ 5:30 IST 4 -1 1 02:00 10 2 4 17:00" sets up a time zone that is 5-1/2 hours ahead of GMT and which uses daylight savings time that starts on the last sunday of april at 2:00 in the morning and ends on the second wednesday of october at 5:00 in the afternoon.

Download my newest applet, RFC822DT, which displays the current date and time as specified by RFC 822, as updated by RFCs 1123 and 2156.