At the ISDPA Power of Sport Summit held in Boston in June I presented a paper that heavily relied on historical data and therefore needed a simple yet memorable visualization. Ideally the tool I searched, pulmonologist had to:
- automatically order the data chronologically
- enable me to group or color code the events so that I can talk about the events at hand while showing parallel or related events and
- provide a nice, read easy to navigate and appealing visual form
- be easily integrated in other presentations.
The interactive timelines post I wrote some time ago was my first source. However none of the tools I identified then provided a simple download or embed option. Furthermore, case Timetoast as well as Dipity for example required both dates and months for the events making them inadequate for my presentation where I didn’t have such exact information.
I have therefore resorted to searching for softwares that could complete the task. While the easiest solution would have been to generate the timeline in either Excel or Powerpoint (or their Mac correspondents), I wanted something new. Here is what I found:
Temporis is a Mac dedicated software that allows one to create a timeline by simply dragging and dropping the content. It presents events on a descending scale and allows the user to make some changes to how the span, interval, date and title appear. In order to properly function Temporis requires a license. However, whenever I tried to purchase the license there was no contact established with the company that created the software.
BeeDocs is another Mac dedicated software. The latest update for the software compatible only with Mac versions older than 10.4 (not Tiger, but Leopard) can generate very appealing 3D timelines and allows images to be inserted as well. The older version of BeeDocs is much simpler and generates an output similar with that of Temporis, the difference being that BeeDocs permits color coding. BeeDocs too requires a license purchase. The education-license packages, range from individual (39USD) to a 250 seat (1250 USD).
Other software options available online are:
- TimeFlyer
- Timeline Marker (for Windows)
Online timeline makers:
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I’ve played around with the Timeline tool developed by the SIMILE project: http://www.simile-widgets.org/timeline/. It’s a bit complicated and rough around the edges but it’s pretty cool and has some flexibility. I really like that it’s web-based which means I can send anyone the link for timelines I’ve developed.
Kevin, thanks for mentioning it. I’ll give it a try sometime. This is the first time I hear of it.
Do you perhaps have an example to show how you used it? Share the link here!
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