A while ago my brother asked if I knew a program that could do a nice timeline for him. Much like google’s stock thing where you can drag the window size to “zoom in the mainview” and “bubbles pop up”. I don’t, didn’t and may never know a good one. He made his in photoshop. It looked awesome. was extremely customized, but it wasn’t so interactive or on the web.

I read some articles from the long now foundation, they provided a timeline program in python but _mylord_ it was compiling hell on windows. I had to do crazy cygwin install stuff and edit their code, upon reading compile error line numbers. And in the end it looked like shité. bullshavik. soooo far from web 2.0 it was sad. Well at least they write their dates with a zero out front as in 02008. ‘Cause that’s thinking. (At least they implemented a file format so that your data isn’t locked in)

Peter had to use photoshop, longnow stunk, I want to see google offer one as a service, that feels like their stock exchange thing. I also found another one, it had the bubble thing and looked nice. but it didn’t have the google stock exchange overview thing.

Argh. So dear internet, please recommend a good one.

here is the required reading before recommending:

http://simile.mit.edu/timeline/
http://www.longnow.org/about/longview.php
http://finance.google.com/finance
http://timepedia.org they offer a gwt app named chronoscope that is more for data-points than human history timelines. but it’s pretty fantastic considering it has to do a lot of interpolation like vector graphics and looks amazing. And so I can only wait for their human history attempt with the hopes that it looks like beedocs the Mac OS X app.
the bee docs timeline program creator himself had post like this, and thus his list. His program can even do links to the web and export it all to pdf. It doesn’t display live on the web. But at least it hit’s the mark with information and beauty
http://www.hyperhistory.com/ (goto then click on hyper history online) like peter’s, except painstakingly htmlified. On a side note, I find the individual ones kind of weak. But, they sell a giant poster to put on your wall.

Considering that I love well done maps that provide both an overview and elegance to information access, hyperhistory’s poster and beedocs get my vote. On my wall I have a CANDU nuclear reactor in great 3/4 view, the avro arrow (with a zillion parts labeled), and the final fantasy 3 (6 in japan) world map (includes the world of ruin). Most importantly is a poster by IBM called “Men of Modern Mathematics” which I’ve always wanted (oh and they know they left out women and tried to correct that I hear but I’ve never seen that one).

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