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A couple of questions: -The time-line on the front page seems to mark major life events. Why would I need a web site to remember when I got married or was in c

by jknupp 17y ago

A couple of questions: -The time-line on the front page seems to mark major life events. Why would I need a web site to remember when I got married or was in college? -In hindsight, it's easy to see what events were important (at any level of granularity) but much more difficult as things are happening. How do I know when something is sufficiently important to put it on a timeline? -What useful information are users supposed to be able to glean from this type of presentation of the data they enter? The example on the front page should show events that are interrelated and the copy should draw interesting conclusions from this. Right now, it seems like each time-line is totally orthogonal, which I can't really figure out the value of.

matt1 17y ago
Hey, good questions: - You might not be interested in making an biographical timeline for yourself, but consider making for your father or grandfather. If you're like me, you probably don't have a good idea of what they were doing and where they were when they were young. With these timelines, you can get a much better idea of how the events in their lives ultimately led to you. - And that's just biographical timelines. I'd like to see someone do a Y Combinator timeline, where companies are along the side and the spans of time represent their existence. It's very flexible and I think there's dozens of use cases. - The level of detail depends on what you want to discover. - Visualizing time is very hard. For example, imagine a timeline of World War II. There were a lot of moving pieces and simply by reading a block of text, it's not easy to get a feel for how they all relate to each other in time. Timelines, and especially these timelines, make it much easier. My hope is that people will build and discover timelines that make them go "Ah, I get it now."
- jknupp 17y ago
  Your last example is exactly the type of thing that should be on your front page (see the end of my third question above). If you're trying to show how the service would be useful, present a time-line of something that would be difficult to understand or appreciate if presented another way. Most people (I assume) are pretty intimately familiar with their personal time-line.
  - matt1 17y ago
    I'm waiting for someone to build it so I can feature it on the front page. In time...
diN0bot 17y ago
i don't know...i just entered my own and....it's strangely fun to look at. once. unless you could automatically gather this information from facebook? that'd be sweet. i do think the biggest add is the framework, both embeddable (after creation through a choice of gui and api) and as a js library. i think you'll be hard pressed for folks to pay for this, but you can likely cover costs by asking for donations. this looks more to me like something that you'll eventually open source and use as mad cred on your resume. i'm already thinking, hey this guy/gal is cool. what's he going to work on next? maybe it'd be fun to work together. then again, what do i, a developer, know about business. maybe you can charge for the embed stuff, especially the non-dev create pathway. developers are just not likely to pay for this....unless there was a super awesome premium ui capable or automatic detection<---but see i'd rather use your api with my own auto detection. would love to do a beta with you.
- matt1 17y ago
  Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase. Martin Luther King, Jr It's very early, and I plan to work on this for the long haul, so we'll see.

by jknupp 17y ago

matt1 17y ago

Hey, good questions: - You might not be interested in making an biographical timeline for yourself, but consider making for your father or grandfather. If you're like me, you probably don't have a good idea of what they were doing and where they were when they were young. With these timelines, you can get a much better idea of how the events in their lives ultimately led to you. - And that's just biographical timelines. I'd like to see someone do a Y Combinator timeline, where companies are along the side and the spans of time represent their existence. It's very flexible and I think there's dozens of use cases. - The level of detail depends on what you want to discover. - Visualizing time is very hard. For example, imagine a timeline of World War II. There were a lot of moving pieces and simply by reading a block of text, it's not easy to get a feel for how they all relate to each other in time. Timelines, and especially these timelines, make it much easier. My hope is that people will build and discover timelines that make them go "Ah, I get it now."

jknupp 17y ago
Your last example is exactly the type of thing that should be on your front page (see the end of my third question above). If you're trying to show how the service would be useful, present a time-line of something that would be difficult to understand or appreciate if presented another way. Most people (I assume) are pretty intimately familiar with their personal time-line.
- matt1 17y ago
  I'm waiting for someone to build it so I can feature it on the front page. In time...

diN0bot 17y ago

i don't know...i just entered my own and....it's strangely fun to look at. once. unless you could automatically gather this information from facebook? that'd be sweet. i do think the biggest add is the framework, both embeddable (after creation through a choice of gui and api) and as a js library. i think you'll be hard pressed for folks to pay for this, but you can likely cover costs by asking for donations. this looks more to me like something that you'll eventually open source and use as mad cred on your resume. i'm already thinking, hey this guy/gal is cool. what's he going to work on next? maybe it'd be fun to work together. then again, what do i, a developer, know about business. maybe you can charge for the embed stuff, especially the non-dev create pathway. developers are just not likely to pay for this....unless there was a super awesome premium ui capable or automatic detection<---but see i'd rather use your api with my own auto detection. would love to do a beta with you.

matt1 17y ago
Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase. Martin Luther King, Jr It's very early, and I plan to work on this for the long haul, so we'll see.