Web-based timeline tools have come a long way… since last year. I have a bunch (among like 30 tools) to update into 50+ Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story (not to mention a plan to yet redo the site a new way) (how do you like the run on parentheticals) (?).
I am keen to try out the Verite Timeline tool, which seems to offer a json type interface for creating media rich timelines right in your web page, or to generate the source data in Google Spreadsheet. That is a post for another day.
This morning I came across Jill Walker’s blog post mentioning memolane as a new “scrapbook” type tool (jill/txt is one of the earliest blogs I recall coming across when I started in ed tech, she has had some long running blog power).
So memolane creates “memory”? lanes? from your tracks in social media spaces. You get to add your accounts, not by entering username/passwords- that is so 2008 — but by authenticating into those systems.
I added twitter, flickr, youtube, soundcloud, instagram (OH NO IT IS NO LONGER HIP?), and my own blog’s RSS feed.
It’s a good set of services, and I would not be surprised to see more added.
What memolane does elegantly is to create a timeline from the content from these sources:
Where the info is put into those little boxes, each of which loads when clicked so you can wiatch a video, see a photo, listen to an audio, etc:
with the ability to add comments, vote up/down etc.
My first one I made is just everything from these sources – keep in mind they only go back as far as the data apis allow, the 300 tweets, maybe (?) 500 flickr photos, and only your last 20 blog posts- but going forward, it should keep a running tab quite well.
I also noted it does not grab all flirk photos or tweets, it seems to be doing some level of sampling (I am only guessing here).
But the interface is slick, and you can even embed it- let’s see…
You can create more “lanes” and it seems like, if you create contacts here, you might be able to have group lanes (?). The other thing you can do is to put a keyword filter on and set a starting and end date so here is one I tried for my travel last year, stuff tagged “odyssey” from June to December 2011:
The elegance here is that once set up, it continually is adding to itself, with no touch from me required. It does suggest some thought given to how you tag stuff across these services, and I am pondering how this might comeinto play for a group project.
It does intrigue me, and I’m heading back down the lane to look a bit closer.
Hunh. Now this is interesting. Groups makes me think of time lining the wired family through time. Or capture a year Christmas to Christmas.
Thanks for featuring this new web 2.0-ness.
I also appreciate the point to Jux.com. I’m using it to showcase photography, mostly.
https://sandramardene.jux.com/
Do I have time this morning to go down memo lane? Yikes!
looks interesting – made me wonder if there wasn’t some utility for profs running distributed courses online using it not for their own stuff but for the classes work. Guess the APIs/feeds would need to be public, but am wondering if putting student work on a timeline like this would be helpful or just clutter. Seems like #ds106 might be a place to try this out
Hi Scott,
Are you a professor? We’d love to see how you incorporate Memolane into your own class if you are! Let us know how you end up using Memolane at katie@memolane.com 🙂
Cheers,
Katie Stern
Community Manager at Memolane
@memolane
Intetesting idea, I am not sure how it keeps up on very busy feeds, but worth a try.
We are very interested in new ideas for the ds106 front door- the flow is too much for a chronological view.