I just launched a new concept for Reger.com and web logging called Time Periods. Time Periods are just that... periods of time. Nothing major here. They have a start date, an end date, a title and a description.
You create a set of time periods to represent, say, periods in your life. The periods that you lived each place. Or the time periods that you attended particular schools. Or the time periods that you dated certain people.
Or the time periods you wore your hair long.
Or the time periods you worked at a particular company.
Or the time periods you listened to a certain band.
You get the picture... the possibilities are endless. Once you define your time periods you get a cool chart showing the relative length of each one... a timeline, if you will.
But that's not the cool part. The cool part is when you look at your web log entries. Suddenly, at the bottom of each entry, you see those time periods that overlap the time of the entry. Trey cool!
This gives you context. It shows you what big picture things were happening in your life at the time of the entry. Remember, Reger.com is dedicated to long-term nostalgia capture, organization and presentation. From any particular entry you can click to view all other entries that occurred in the same time period. Wow!
And the beauty is that it happens across log types (Running Log, Biking Log, etc). And it happens transparently. You don't have to create a link from each entry to a timeline. Badda bing. It's done.
You can view all of my time periods by going to my home page and clicking on the left side on "Time Periods." From there you can click one of the time periods and it'll pull up all entries that happened during that time. Or you can just surf my site a bit and you'll certainly see the little timeline at the bottom of entries.
I built the ability to have private Time Periods. Only you or those you give permission to can see them. I don't have any private time periods, but I know that it would be a requested feature.
You can also define some periods as open ended. This means that they don't have an actual end date... the automatically inherit the current date/time. This makes sense, for example, for the Living in Tucker Time Period. At some point if I move I can assign a final date to it.
I'm sure there is some prior art out there in the web logging world for this, and the fact that I came up with it on my own in no way means it's mine.
Time Periods are now available for anybody who has a Reger.com account. Enjoy! Oh, and let me know how to make it better.
This is how the timeline looks as part of an entry. The "Directions Via Computer" entry took place during five Time Periods... Living in the Tucker Home, Engaged to Heather, etc. Note that the right of the bars is darker. The event happens at the changeover between light and dark. This gives context to the entry and shows how the Time Periods relate to one another.
This is my life in Time Period form. You read from lower left to upper right. I don't like the fact that it spreads out so much vertically. I may play with some schemes to keep things more "timeline-ish." I think it's pretty neat.
SoCon08