Program (or 2.0 site) to track my life, like a Gantt

[cettolox]

Hi,

I am 36 and my memory is very bad. I was wandering if someone of you has ever come across a program (or better a website) that let one insert on a time line spanning decades his own life event, like the years of school, university, work, family life, ecc...  It should come up like a project gantt chart, with the ability of zooming in and out the time scale and insert events with the description, or maybe videos or photos or whatever.

An example of possible implemetation is shown in http://simile.mit.edu/timeline/examples/monet/monet.html

This is done with the excellent http://simile.mit.edu/timeline

I just would like to avoid setting up a php web server to host the code to make these timelines.

Any suggestions ?

/Stef

[mouser]

I really love this idea, might be especially nice way to make a kind of interactive autobiography/biography of the life of someone you know.

Be nice if someone could recommend some existing software or websites that do this kind of thing.

[cettolox]

I found www.xtimeline.com and www.dandelife.com

xtimeline seems to be perfect to post others life timelines.

dandelife seems to be what i was searching for (social life timelining) but I don't like the way timelines are shown... and I am not sure if they are SMILE compatible... I will dig deeper.

/Stef

[mouser]

Great finds so far, please keep 'em coming -- I have a feeling this will turn into a useful thread!

It's also great to attach screenshots to the things you find.  I'll add two for the programs you found already -- please consider attaching new ones for new things you find.

Xtimeline (http://www.xtimeline.com):

"When we developed the timeline tool, our friends thought of many ways to creatively use the timeline. Some of them thought the timeline could become a great public service, a resource for history education and for debate over current issues. Others wanted to create biographical timelines for celebrities and their scandalous relationships.  The ability of these timelines to entertain and educate convinced us that other people would enjoy our timeline as much we do. And that's how xtimeline came to have a home of its own."

Dandelife (www.dandelife.com):

"Dandelife is a place for you to record the events of your life, past and present, public and private. Have you photos and videos online in different places? No worries. Like you, your Dandelife is ultimate mash-up. Live well - we're listening!"

Similie (http://simile.mit.edu/timeline/)

"Timeline is a DHTML-based AJAXy widget for visualizing time-based events. It is like Google Maps for time-based information. Below is a live example that you can play with. Pan the timeline by dragging it horizontally."

As cettolox said, this one isn't a hosted solution, it's a library you can use on your own site.

[Darwin]

Cool! I think this is a great idea and a really interesting thread - I'll be following it with interest as I could use something like this myself. Now, where'd I leave my 3 year old?!

[Jimdoria]

I don't think you need a PHP-backed web server, or even a web server at all, to use the SIMILE timeline. That's the point. It all runs in the browser, and uses a simple file-based structure for the data. You need exactly two files (web page hosting the timeline code and JSON data file). You can keep it on your hard drive or on a public server.

I came across this myself recently, and it was the first time I'd encountered the JSON concept. Pretty cool stuff.

[Armando]

Interesting... Similie looks nice.

I wonder if there would be some add-ons for Outlook for a kind of "lifelong timeline"...??? Something that would use the Outlooks "journal" capabilities or something like that... I might do a little search tomorrow...

The reason I'm referring to Outlook is that it seems like it would be useful to have such a timeline integrated to one's calendar, task manager, etc. Just a gut feeling.