Note and Timeline Apps

A lineage of note / timeline apps, from the original "pearl necklace" and microfacts ideas up to TimeMapper.

  • hypernotes (2011) — merged into TimeMapper
  • timeliner (2012) — merged into TimeMapper
  • weaving history / microfacts (2007–2010) — shut down. The idea was older and included a vision of how we should write history and textbooks in future; only a small part was ever articulated (the pearl-necklace metaphor post). Ahead of its time technically — it needed a JS app back when JS apps were painful (cross-browser hell, no MVC framework — the first one shipped mid-project). Used SIMILE Timeline.
  • timemapper (2012–) — microfacts redone: much simpler, with a Google Sheets backend and modern JS libraries (Recline, TimelineJS).
  • listify (2012?) — still going, I think.

Basic idea I still think is interesting: a "note" has three axes — time, place, theme (or, more specifically, a narrative / thread) — and you can visualise a thread as a timeline, a map, or both at once.

TODO: get a video of the original microfacts (archive.org/web); write this up properly.

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