Webware

(Credit: Dipity)

Timeline creator Dipity has finally been put to a completely awesome use: a user called "tatercakes" has created a timeline of fads and memes that have surfaced on the Internet since its earliest days. And, as far as I can see, almost nothing has been left out--if you're a Dipity member, you can add to the list.

Among the chronological listings are some memes that pre-date my knowledge of the Internet ("Trojan Room coffee pot"); a few classics like All Your Base, Hampsterdance, and Peanut Butter Jelly Time; and more recent ones like lolcats and Rickrolling. Don't know what those are? Check out the timeline.

There are also a few culturally significant moments that go beyond the Web, like Stephen Colbert's White House Press Correspondents Dinner speech in 2006. The pirated C-SPAN clip of that speech taught the media industry that it's tough to put a lockdown on video that everybody wants to see, taught the White House that you should really be familiar with a comedian's schtick before booking him for a speaking engagement, and taught millions of erstwhile American Luddites about the possibilities of YouTube.

Aside from that, the list does not yet include many of the people who have arguably turned into Internet memes themselves: digitally beloved politicians like Howard Dean in 2004 and Ron Paul earlier this year, a smattering of YouTube stars, and over-the-top bloggers like Perez Hilton.

But Sen. Ted Stevens' parodied, mocked, and dance-remixed "Series of Tubes" speech was the only really glaring omission I saw, aside from a few memes that are entirely too disgusting to mention in a family-friendly context (though be warned, a few gross-outs like "Goatse" are already on the list).

It also fails to mention, at least at this point, the latest Internet meme: the Internet meme timeline.

Capzles takes the idea of telling a story with a photo album or a vacation video and puts it all into one multimedia package.

The start-up calls its product "social storytelling." Of course, this means the stories you make with its Web-based authoring tool are eminently shareable with anyone and everyone.

Using a patent-pending Flash-based technology, photos, video clips, and audio files are uploaded to Capzles in a linear, chronological strip. Each image or file can be scrolled through horizontally and selected. Each can have a caption, links, and a blog.

It seems best suited for creating stories in an episodic fashion, rather than for sharing single photos or videos. There are a variety of premade backgrounds, themes, and fonts to choose from if you're not the supercreative type. And if you are, there's a color picker and a gradient tool for designing a Capzle from scratch.

Capzles is also a place to look for Capzles made by other people. Users can search by topic or keyword for others' stories they've created. Besides a typical listing of results, the results are also presented in a timeline fashion to find specific stories created at a certain point in time.

The site is still in private beta.

(Credit: Eric Meyer / CNET Networks)

Here's an evening treat for your eyes. CSS guru Eric Meyer has put together a spiffy-looking timeline chronicling the lives (and versions) of five popular Web browsers. Internet Explorer makes it on there twice as Meyer has opted to split up the versions between 6 and the (soon to be mandatory) Version 7. the PC and now defunct Mac version, which Microsoft capped in 2003.

The most interesting takeaways from the graph? Opera's gotten the most versioning love for its age, and all of the browsers share a fairly similar updating schedule at various parts of each year.

Meyer notes that he created the graph after getting fed up with Wikipedia's vertical charts. The result is a chart that will likely require you to do the dreaded horizontal scroll--that is unless you've got your hands on one of those NEC wide-screen displays.

Note: viewing the chart in IE6 won't work.

[Found on Digg]

Office time-waster alert! AOL's AIM Network has launched an interesting new service, CircaVie, which allows you to create a timeline of just about anything--your kid's life, your job, your backpacking excursion in Southeast Asia, or the chronicle of last week's party's devolution into debauchery. You can then embed your timelines into your blog, share them with friends, I played around with it, and I like the concept (a lot), but this is the kind of service that's left me wishing there was more you could do with it.

It's clear that CircaVie is trying to gear itself toward social media junkies who are eager to find new ways to map out and visualize their lives on the Web: when choosing your user icon, for example, you can opt to use your AIM icon, or select your user picture from Flickr or Twitter. It'd be nice to see this same implementation available for photo and video integration: you can put in the link to a photo anywhere on the Web or upload one to accompany a milestone on your timeline, but there's no way to work in your Flickr, Photobucket, or what-have-you account.

CircaVie's interface is really cool, it runs smoothly, and I really like having the ability to create a "time-tagged" photo mashup in the same way that I'm a big fan of Flickr's geotagging maps. But it needs more features to appeal to people like me who dig functionality. The biggest problem, as previously is that CircaVie isn't tied to any photo or video-sharing services, so you have to individually link and integrate whatever multimedia accompanies each marker on the timeline. Some other developments I'd like to see: a "location" field so that you can geo-tag events on your timeline (which could lead to some kinds of really cool space-and-time visualizations), the ability to delineate events with a span of time rather than just a start point, a zoom in/out function, a better selection of skins...the list goes on.

In other words, I think it's kind of begging for an API, but the Flash-based software doesn't look like it's really set up for that too well.

It's in beta, so maybe we'll be seeing those things soon. Alternately, maybe Flickr or a Flickr developer will come out with something similar that's more functional. Until then, it's still a cute little way to procrastinate.

Note: This post has been updated from it's original publishing. It now contains a hands-on video overview of Remix.

Adobe's Remix is a new Web-based video editing tool that will be provided free to all Photobucket members in the coming weeks. Remix allows you to string together and edit short video clips. We covered the announcement of the online video editor last week, but got our hands on it this morning.

Remix is essentially a stripped-down version of Adobe Premiere Elements. You get a timeline with clips and transitions, along with a source bin containing all the media from your Photobucket account. Adding clips to your movie is as simple as dragging and dropping. There's also a handy clipping tool if you feel like cutting out the boring bits. There are only three transitions to choose from, and they're all fades. This might seem like a letdown, but honestly if you've ever edited video before, you know some of the flashier transitions aren't necessarily better than the fundamentals.

To put the finishing touches on your movie you can add titles and all sorts of cheesy digital overlays, like a police hat or gingerbread people (both genders are provided). You also can add thought or chat bubbles with customizable text. What really feels off about adding all these effects is that you can only add one to each clip. There is a way to get around this--by cutting your clips into pieces to make them separate--but it would be nice to have a separate timeline for overlays, as the majority of video editing apps provide.

You also can add music to your film, though not your own. The library of music clips is fairly large, although you've probably never heard the tracks. There's no way to add voice narration.

When you're done with your masterpiece, there are the standard URL and embed links, but no way to locally save or export your video to other formats. No doubt Adobe wants you to buy one of its video editing programs for this. This also means there's no way to archive your videos--you've got to rely on Photobucket to keep running.

I like Adobe Remix for the casual stringing together of clips. It's really easy to use and quite fast. The Photobucket integration is spot-on, but don't be surprised if you see Remix popping up in other sites, since the partnership isn't exclusive. It will be interesting to see where it shows up next.

See also Jumpcut and EyeSpot.