Timelines and Temporal Information

Simile Timeline

Ajax (dhtml) timeline code.

http://simile.mit.edu/timeline/

Primary data provision format is json but there are parsers for a couple of other formats such as RDF. Details of basic experimentation experience by RP at:

http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/okfn-help/2007-October/000037.html

Timeline + Geo

Tools that integrate the (simultaneous) display of geographical and temporal information.

Simile Timeline + js map

See this (very) recent thread:

which references this example:

http://www.oe-files.de/gmaps/usgseq.html

Timemap

(Feb 2008) TimeMap? is a Javascript library to facilitate using Google Maps with a SIMILE timeline. The library allows you to load one or more datasets in JSON or KML onto both a map and a timeline simultaneously. By default, only items in the visible range of the timeline are displayed on the map.

http://code.google.com/p/timemap/

Mapping

Various well-known js maps (google, yahoo etc) but most of these are proprietary. Would much to prefer to use a fully open system. One option is to code against an abstracted api such as http://mapstraction.com/

Open Providers of JS Map

General Presentation

Exhibit

http://code.google.com/p/simile-widgets/

Exhibit has some similarities to what we wish to do (at least on the presentation side of things). After specifying lists of similar items in a lightweight (and fairly unconstrained) json-based data format you can display the data using their js code and an html file in the following ways (see original docs for more info):

  • List/Table
  • Timeline (using the simile timeline)
  • On a map (using google maps)

We should aim to be reusing Exhibit and the rest of the simile-toolset as much as possible. Our aim is to spur reuse plus integration from outside.

Python Tools

Dates and Times

Parsing: http://feedparser.org/docs/date-parsing.html