We’ve built the start of a timeline explorer using the New York Times Article Search API. It’s pretty fun, especially since you can search for, say, Mark Bittman’s seafood recipes. Please let us know what you think at feedback [at] timeglider.com.
An experiment with the NYT data API
February 12, 2010 – 4:45 pm
in progress: calendar importing
January 27, 2010 – 11:42 pm
Thanks to TG user Steve Duncan (and other earlier feedbackers), I finally embarked on creating an importing system for iCal (Google and Apple calendars mainly). From the Plus tools, you’ll be able to sync multiple calendars onto a timeline, each calendar with its own assigned icon. The first stages are mostly complete: a decent parser of the iCal format, and a little management tool for adding/editing. Now, if there was only a way to build “importance” into this… Stay tuned for more developments about calendars. After this, a better way to sync timelines to RSS feeds…
We’re seeking timelines to feature on our home page
January 19, 2010 – 12:10 pm
Now that we have over 12,000 users, I’m sure that there are scads of marvellous timelines in our databases that would be great to feature — both to shine the light on our own product, but perhaps also to help spread the word about what you’re working on.
Do you have a timeline you’re proud of that you think would do both? We’re going to rotate featuring six or nine timelines on the home page, and we’ll also have an extended list of all featured timelines on a separate page. Send me a little information about yourself, your project, the timeline — and the please provide the public timeglider URL — by emailing us at info@… History timelines are of course fantastic, but we’re especially keen to see example from business, planning, law, marketing, medicine, and other unexpected use cases.
Thanks!
Some nice press coverage for TimeGlider
January 16, 2010 – 11:43 am
To be frank, we at TimeGlider (formerly Mnemograph) has made very few efforts to promote ourselves. About two years ago, we sent out invitations to about 30 prominent education technology bloggers telling them about ourselves, and have done little else since then. Strictly through word-of-mouth (delicious, twitter, blogs, etc etc) we’ve grown to having about 12,000 users. That’s pretty small by most standards, but a nice number when one considers it to be “organic” growth. It’s a clear testament to the power of our current networking and broadcasting tools.
Most recently, we’ve caught the attention of Mashable, the New York Times, and the BBC:
In September ‘09 we were featured in a Mashable article on novel writing tools:
http://mashable.com/2009/09/16/write-novel/
Just before Christmas we appeared in the New York Times education section:
http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/from-00-to-10-defining-the-decade/
And we got the new year off with a bang with some fabulous coverage on the BBC’s ‘Click’ program, including a very nice video segment (about 1/2 way through)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/8443401.stm
So thank you to those of you who’ve helped spread the word. As I’ve said, 2010 promises to be a year of leaps and bounds.
I’m Back from the Moon
December 7, 2009 – 10:54 am
To those of you following this blog, it might seem as if it’s been an aeon since our last post — and since changes have been made to our application. Okay, in internet time, it has! This being a one-man band, my hiatus has meant some stillness here for a while. My wife and I bought our first house, here in Boise back in September, and are doing major remodeling to it. (See these pictures). In a former life, I was a cabinet/furniture maker and carpenter, so I’ve been completely, and pleasantly at times, absorbed. We’re still living in only half of the house, with painting, flooring, and much more to do in the other half. But now, fortunately for TimeGlider, I’ve injured my neck!
Anyhow, I appreciate everyone’s patience and continued interest in TimeGlider, and I apologize if I’ve left some of you hanging with your thoughts and questions.
In other important and related news, this won’t be a “one man band” any longer, as I’ve forged a marvelous relationship with Shawn Thompson and his talented team at Venture Interactive, who are based in Harrisonburg, VA. With VI’s help, TimeGlider will go into warp drive in 2010, and will undergo its own major remodeling and re-engineering.
I hope everyone out there is enjoying this holiday season, and has a very Happy New Year.
— Michael
Some daily history resources
August 14, 2009 – 10:27 am
On August 8, 1809, John Quincy Adams wrote, “Thick fogs all day. No observation. Saw a Schooner. Read Langhorne’s Life of Plutarch, and began with Theseus.” You can now follow Mr. Adams’s 200 year old musings (twitterable versions) by following him him on . . . Twitter thanks to the Massachusetts Historical Society.
The Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities (www.masshumanities.org) also has a nice daily dose of history, at their “Mass Moments” site: www.massmoments.org. Today’s moment, from 1765: “Boston Mob Protests Stamp Act”. MassMoments publishes their “moment” on an RSS feed, too.
Many recent TimeGlider sign-ups have found their way here from Dick Eastman’s prolific daily (+) newsletter about history and genealogy: Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter. If you’re a family historian, it should certainly be in your bookmarks.
On the more mass media side, the History Channel has a daily dose of history (which comes with a dose of commercials) here. Today’s piece mentions the East Coast blackout of 2003. I was in Brooklyn, NY. With no lights or electric stoves, and on a very hot night, I hung out with our neighbor, drank beer, and roasted hot dogs over a camping stove out on the sidewalk. Thousands of others were out likewise all across the city. The biggest blackout in recent history was also the biggest block party.
Bump from Slashdot
May 21, 2009 – 11:23 am
Wow, what a morning. We got a nice little mention in Slashdot — one of the most widely read science/tech blogs on the web — and signups are going through the roof. We’re also getting lots of positive feedback and helpful bug reports, including the fact that I’d forgotten to re-install our blog after a server move.
The Slashdot piece headlines with “Timeglider Software…” but it’s ostensibly about a fantastic timeline put together by Steve Usdin, at the Wilson Center in D.C., about the Rosenberg spy case.
We moved our server just in the nick of time, it seems — to a (dv) account at MediaTemple.
In other news, we’ve just struck up a relationship with David Knape, aka Bumpslide Inc., who’s a bona fide Jedi Master of Flash and Actionscript. He’s going to help us rebuild the application, not entirely from scratch, but in a new (”model-view-controller”) application framework.
Big Thanks to Our Feedbackers!
April 24, 2009 – 3:55 pm
Wanted to send special thanks to all the people who have been writing in recently to report bugs, suggest features, and so forth. We’re a very small development team and we really do rely on the dialog we have with our users. A number of you have recently reported bugs and then helped in the testing of solutions. So: Thanks to Alyssa, Llonard, Steve, Josie, and others.
Testing an embed via WordPress
April 24, 2009 – 3:46 pm
I’m testing a new javascript code that I hope is simple and viable on various browsers, blogging systems, etc.: It’s especially tricky to fit interactive timelines into these narrow-column formats, but do it we must! If you have thoughts on embedding methods and preferences, let us know.
Great Book: Travels with Herodotus
March 17, 2009 – 8:09 pm
Of course you should read some Herodotus — who, around 450 bce, essentially invented the practices of history and journalism — but it doesn’t seem appetizing, does it. To get you excited about this fellow, you should first read Ryszard Kapuscinsky’s Travels With Herodotus. Says Kapuscinsky:
And so a person consumed, obsessively tormented by allusion reaches for Herodotus. How many allusions he will find there.
Like Herodotus, who walked across the known world in his day, Kapuscinsky was a paripatetic world journalist and seemed magnetically drawn to fascinating places at explosive and transformative times — in Ethiopia in the early 70s, for example, where he reported on the fall of Hallie Salassie. (His classic The Emporer is from that period). Travels is a reading of Herodotus mixed with Kapuscinsky’s own brilliant travel writing and journalism.
I’d highly recommend this beautifuly layered book: I’m re-reading it and enjoying it just as much as I did a year ago.