Tracking time in a Web 2.0 bottle

The brainiacs at the SIMILE Project, a joint effort between MIT and the W3C, have created an innovative mashup that offers a new way to track time-sensitive events.

Their interactive timeline, a DHTML-based widget, is demonstrated on the SIMILE site with a minute-by-minute breakdown of developments that transpired during the JFK assassination. But conspiracy freaks won't be the only ones impressed by the technology, which is also used to plot the history of religions and the evolution of dinosaurs.

The timeline can track multiple developments, including those that occur simultaneously, and presents them on a grid with pop-up details along the way. The result is a clean visualization that is relatively easy to produce and brings context to otherwise disparate events. As its developers explain, "It is like Google Maps for time-based information."