Visualizing a flow of events can help our understanding of causes and consequences, but sometimes important details get lost in the overview. Timeline, a part of MIT’s Simile project helps avoid this problem by simultaneously representing events on large and small scales with the ability to pop up background details on each event.

SIMILE | Timeline via kwout

Viewing the same information in linked time bands at different scales gives an interesting feel to navigating a chronology. Minutes and days can be scrolled with equal ease, balancing swift navigation with exact control.

Timeline runs wholly in the browser with no software installation required on either browser or server. It gets it’s data from XML or JSON sources, which means that it can be integrated into almost any web framework, adding another visualization option for extending existing reporting systems and data repository interfaces.

An example of an effective integration of third party data is Jörn Clausen’s USGS Live Earthquake Mashup which uses a combination of Timeline and Google Maps API to present information from the United States Geological Survey’s RSS feed.

USGS Live Earthquake Mashup via kwout

Timeline has also been adopted for use in commercial applications. One example is Salesforce Labs’ Campaign Timeline Calendar which displays an overview of sales campaigns and their durations.

Salesforce Labs Campaign Timeline Calendar via kwout

Potential business application include:

• marketing presentations of company or product histories
• conference schedules
• communicating project plans, achievements or activities
• documenting changing conditions for P.E.S.T. or competitor analysis

Timeline provides an engaging and innovative way to navigate chronologies and will become a part of many business and educational applications.

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