101 Ideas for interactive timeline projects.

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101 Ways to Use Softimeline

Build a biography of yourself or a loved one.
Category headings might be Places, Relationships, School/Career or create your own.
A corporate profile of your company.
Select or create up to 12 categories like Facility, Management, Marketing, Technology. Mandatory viewing for new employees.
Chronicle your vacations.
You get to show off all your photos. Timeline categories might be Lodging, Restaurants, Castles & Churches, Transportation, New Friends, etc.
Create a pictorial resume.
In addition to the usual resume stuff like Experience, Education, Hobbies, etc you might have categories for actual work product, be it writings, drawings or other documents; way too much to include with a traditional paper resume.
The roots and history of a community.
Categories are Native Americans, People, Agriculture, Architecture, Government, etc. Best of all, you get to decide. You could have all custom categories if desired; (up to 12).
You’re a history teacher.
Students get to build a project over a semester or longer, an historical slice of something in the curriculum.
You’re a civil war buff.
So chronicle your favorite battle, months, or weeks. Category headings might be Generals, The President, Congress, Northern Home Front, Southern Home Front, anything you decide.
You are a coin collector.
Maybe a timeline each for Silver Dollars, Halves, Quarters etc, with photos of your collection, and the history behind some of the coins.
The lives of your kids and/or nieces and nephews.
Each person gets their own timeline with their name as the category heading, and you build a pictorial history of their lives.
Mom, dad, brothers and sisters.
Similar to number 9 above, but different generations of family.
Chronicle the history of a favorite team.
Managers, Outfielders, Pitchers, etc. are the categories; now the viewer can interactively see who was playing 2nd base in 1983, and a lot more.
The year (or 6 months) before the wedding.
The Bride, Groom, His and Her Parents each get their own timeline category where you
document all the activity up ‘till the Big Day. Then, one might build another Project divided into hours, and this is where you showcase the pictures of the Big Day by the professional photographer.
You are a professional writer.
You develop your plot, characters and subplots in up to a dozen pictorial timelines, so it’s like having 12 parallel storyboards, and you see everything in context.
You are a prosecuting attorney.
The multiple timelines expose the perp’s bogus alibi.
You are a defense attorney.
Witness testimony chronicled in the timelines make it clear your client is innocent.
You love scrapbooking.
What to put on the next page is no longer an issue, because they can browse it any way they wish. You simply put events in the right category, in the right order.
You are concerned about global warming and want to chronicle the evidence.
You’ll have timelines for Glaciers, Ozone Layers, Greenhouse Gasses, etc. to demonstrate the danger to the “flat earth” crowd.
You’re convinced man-made global warming is the hoax of the century.
You’ll have timelines for Glaciers, Ozone Layers, Greenhouse Gasses, etc. to expose the junk science being peddled by the “sky is falling” crowd.
You restore automobiles for fun or profit.
Your digital photos of the disassembly, organized by Drive Train, Fuel System, Electrical, Chrome, etc will be invaluable when putting it back together, and a record like this is certain to add value to the finished restoration.
You’re a professional photographer, it’s a better way to display your book.
Your timeline categories might be Fashion & Beauty, Location, Product, Technology, etc. so now the potential client can look at whatever she chooses, seeing your work in the order it was created, instead of the usual slide show or portfolio pages.
As a medical professional you immediately see the benefits of Softimeline.
With timeline categories like Cardiovascular System, Digestion, Life Style, depending on the patient, it is easier to see conditions in context, and in relation to time and each other.
You appreciate impressionist and post-impressionist art.
Your favorite artists get their own timeline, so you can see how each of their styles evolved over time, and see where Lautrec was partying while Van Gogh was cutting off his ear.
You are The History Channel.
You have the rights to millions of hours of content, you re-purpose it into interactive Softimeline Projects and open up a whole new profit center.
You are somewhat of a social animal and want to keep track of all the fun.
Your categories are Parties, Hunky Guys, Clubs, Trips, Sports Activities, etc. and you have finally figured out a good use for that digital camera.
You love the baseball post season.
Each of the eight teams gets a timeline, the grid is divided into days (games). Click on a game and get Event Pages with clips and photos for the important innings.
You are an archaeologist.
You reverse the grid, so the past is at the bottom, just like the dig. Timelines are populated with photos of the dig at different levels and important artifacts.
The history of your state has always fascinated you.
For your categories you choose those things about your state that you love the most, going back in time before it became a state if you wish.
You organize your i-pod files by musical genre or artist.
You can have more than one Event Page per tune, with pictures, but the primary advantage is to see how the artist’s work or the genre evolved... and be able to compare it to the other timelines.
You are a beautician.
You can have as many as 12 clients in a project (make as many projects as you need) so you can not only track their hair styles over time, but perhaps allow customers to show you what they want for themselves, on your shop’s PC.
You love old movies.
Your categories can be Mysteries, Comedies, Westerns, Drama... or you might give each of your favorite actors and actresses their own timeline, and see their careers in relation to each other.
You are an historian.
You’ve been wishing for a piece of software like this for a long time. Any time period, culture, war, you name it, will be so much more understandable and interesting when categorized, with events viewed in context.
You love photography, have over 20,000 digital and other photos.
By organizing them into a Softimeline project, friends and family can view just the photos and time frame which interests them, and you can easily find any photo you wish.
You are a news organization or a reporter.
Any long running news story sheds more light and understanding on the events when the episodes of all the players can be seen in context, be it a congressional investigation or a scandal.
You are an advertising agency.
Showcase the agency’s work over time with categories like Financial, Automotive, Technology, Health, etc. Customize the presentation with different categories depending on the account you are pitching.
Building a better... whatever.
If the end product you are building or manufacturing is made up of sub-assemblies, each might have a category. Time slices can be days, weeks, months or years. Once you've completed this project, with its pictorial references, components will always be completed simultaneously, ready for final assembly.
Space exploration.
Choose one mission, each component with its own category, or perhaps a dozen missions that interest you over a certain time span. Plenty of Public Domain photos are available.
Great inventors.
Edison, Bell, Ford, and others each get their own timeline. Choose inventors who lived about the same time so you can compare their activities and interactions.
Your favorite basketball team and the year that was.
Each of the 12 players get a category/timeline; the grid should be divided into days. Now you can review any game for every player. You can put in shooting charts, even clips of important action.
You are re-doing a grand old house.
Shoot pictures of everything as you take it apart, especially stuff which will be hidden later, inside a wall, for example. Make timeline categories for whatever you like, but Foundation, Masonry, Plumbing, Electrical, might be a few candidates. This interactive record will be invaluable down the road and surely increase the value of the property.
You are The Biography channel.
As the viewer, maybe I am not interested in all aspects of the subject’s life. So you
re-purpose each biography as a Softimeline project and let me browse it the way I want, after I cough up $19.99 for the DVD.
You are an architecture buff.
As many as a dozen of your favorite architects each get a timeline; you compare their work over time. Or, you choose one architect, show his designs in the order he created them and how his work evolved in categories like Residential, Office Buildings, Churches, etc.
You have a gazillion pictures from baby’s first year, here’s a place to put them.
You can have simple categories, like Laughing, Crying, Sleeping, Making a Mess, etc. It’s amazing how much they change in one year, and you’ll have a record of it.
You follow professional golf.
Suppose you chronicle the 2nd round of the Masters and the performance of the best 12 finishers. Categories could be Singh, Couples, Mickelson, etc. and there’s a gridline for each hole. Clicking on the thumbnail photo for Singh on the 7th hole takes you to an Event page with big photos, details, maybe even clips.
It would be fun to have a pictorial diary of your college years.
Shoot a lot of digital pix of Classmates, Professors, Classes, Activities, create whatever categories you need.
Antiques from a certain period are an important part of your life.
You’ll choose those categories you like best, be it Furniture, China, Prints; you could include the pieces you own, or add in your wish list.
What’s your favorite year?
Maybe you want to show the events of the year you were married... or maybe the year you were born, or better yet, the year someone close to you was born; (as a gift). We’ll help you get started with these categories: The Nation, Politics, The World, The Arts, Business, Lifestyles, Science/Tech, Sports, Our Family.
Maybe you have a classic car collection.
As many as 12 cars will fit in a project, so you can track the life of your ‘49 Hudson, (among others) its owners, and your restoration from the time it was born until today.
Track your favorite race horses.
Categories could be horses names, or the names of racetracks, either way you’ll provide a lot of information to the viewer/browser. Do a season or a number of years.
Research a location for your historical novel or screenplay.
Gather pictures and information from photo archives, maps, memoirs of people who’ve been there, then organize the pertinent material into categories in a Softimeline project. Now simply add some timelines for each of your major characters; use the entire thing as reference to the culture and fashion of the time.
Animals can have timelines, too.
If you have a lot of animals, you probably have plenty of photos of them. A Softimeline project is a great way organize these pictures, so you can travel back in time and more easily recall what pleasure these pets brought to you.
You are a major camera company.
Softimeline should be bundled into every camera sale. If you don’t do it, someone else will.
Slide shows are so 20th century.
With Softimeline, you can build an interactive presentation. With the categories and grid up on the screen, a natural table of contents is created. You can concentrate on areas of high interest to this audience, and easily field questions, quickly moving to exactly the right area for the answer. Or, save your existing slides as jpegs and bring them into a special template.
A logical home page for a kiosk about your city.
Here, visitors can browse the history of any of the aspects you choose for category headings. It’s a learning experience and a way for the visitor to explore your town, and determine specifically where they wish to spend most of their valuable time.
Immortalize your garden over the years.
Shoot digital pictures at planting time, through all the blooming times. Set up a category for each of the different areas of the garden. You’ll not only be able to look back on how much the trees and shrubs have grown, but won’t be digging up your perennials by mistake, and will finally have a place to put all those gorgeous photographs of your flowers.
You’ve leased or purchased the car you have always wanted.
As a bit of a car nut, you do a Softimeline project on the biography of this vehicle. The grid can be months or miles. You’ll have timeline categories for Places (that the car has visited), Maintenance, Fuel Consumption, Important People (who’ve ridden in it), Customizing (special things you’ve done to it), etc.
One of your favorite things to do is eating out..
With headings like Steaks, Breakfast, Chinese, Deli’s, Mexican Food, you record your dining and your critical impressions over time, shooting pictures of the presentation and the ambiance for your Event Pages. Now share the project with other foodies or use it as the basis for a book.
You get to entertain the visitors at a Civil war battle site.
Let them browse the Softimeline project you’ve created which chronicles the details of the battle, over days or weeks, simultaneously showing the locations of different regiments. Put the project on touch-screen PCs at the visitor center, and also sell the DVDs of the project.
The interactive story of building your dream home.
From purchasing the site, through all the planning, permits, construction and landscaping... whether a 3 month or a three year project, this invaluable record will help you remember the good and the bad. It will also help sell the place if that need ever arises.
You love the great outdoors.
Record your weekend (or week’s) activities over the years with timelines for Hiking, RV-ing, Dune Buggying, Fishing, Hunting, Camping, Wind surfing, Off Roading, etc. with plenty of action photos and memories on each Event page.
You make your own medical timeline.
The information you record might allow your doctor to see things in context, reviewing all the tests you’ve been through and meds you’ve taken over the years. It could enable much more information to be transmitted to her, as compared to asking questions and making notes during the valuable minutes of your office visit.
You were a flower child.
Back to the sixties. Might be fun to chronicle those years with categories like Places, Friends, Protests, Drugs, Music, etc.
Rebuilding an engine.
Any mechanical device for that matter. Putting your digital photos of the entire process into a Softimeline project, in meaningful categories would help others go through the same steps ...and you could do it for fun or profit.
You are an interior decorator.
The interior glamour photos of your past projects belong in a Softimeline project; Categories might be Traditional, Period, Eclectic, Mid-Century Modern, etc., but now you can access anything in the project, randomly and interactively, on your laptop, when you pitch a client.
So many retail packages for so many products.
You could easily build a graphic overview of everything that’s ever been done, with categories like Detergents, Bar Soap, Shampoo, Dishwasher Soap. It means that management and designers could look back in time, with a visual table of contents, tracking the success or failure of all your packaging efforts.
You collect old magazines.
This would be a wonderful way to catalog and index them. Categories on the Main screen would be the magazine names, thumbnail photos might be magazine covers. Event Pages would preview important articles from that month and year.
Your museum counts on you to keep track of acquisitions.
Whether art or artifacts, anything visual can be organized beautifully in a Softimeline project with as much or as little research material as you care to include. It should be easily accessible on PCs by visitors; the stories behind the purchases are always of interest.
Don’t lose your neighborhood memories.
Spend some time with some senior citizens in your area. Bring a tape recorder or better yet, a DV camera that you can turn on and forget. Get them to reminisce about the past, make notes, shoot some still pix; they probably have some great old pictures they would let you scan for the project. Your categories will become obvious from the things they talk about.
Track the dollar appreciation of all your favorite cars.
They don’t need to be cars you own, just cars you’ve always wanted to own. Give each car a timeline, starting with its first sale and the sticker price. There are plenty of places to find the prices over the years. Shoot pictures at classic car auctions, or use the ones you already have in that shoebox.
Record the preparation of a gourmet or special meal.
It will show you exactly the right minute to start the soup, salad, starters, and when the different parts of the entree need to get going so they’ll all be ready to serve at the same time. Next time, you or anyone else should be able to duplicate the presentation.
Chronicle a recovery from drugs or alcohol.
Categories might be Family, Mentors, Meetings, Friends, Steps, Book Study etc. as you record how it was, what happened, and how it is now.
Remembering your wardrobe from this and other eras.
Categories might be Dresses, Shoes, Pants, Blouses, Jewelry, etc. so you can travel back in time and enjoy fond memories. Best of all, most of the pictures will be of you modeling your wardrobe.
Make that boring insurance inventory a thing of fun and beauty.
Record when you acquired your stuff and what you paid for it whether the category is Furniture, Jewelry, Appliances, Computers and Electronics, (don’t forget Home Improvement) and be sure to shoot pictures of the valuables from all angles.
You are ESPN with plenty of content which could be re-purposed.
Many sports fans don’t want to watch the entire game, and would jump at the opportunity to view events interactively from the Softimeline DVDs you market, viewing just their favorite parts of the game.
Losing weight is so difficult, you may want to keep track of how you did it.
Categories are Weight, Diet, Size Changes, Measurements, Triggers, Exercise, Emotions, etc. Be sure to include plenty of photos of the old you, the new you and transitional shots.
A beaded purse collection is very photogenic.
Just about any collection should be chronicled, if only for insurance purposes. But your Event Pages can include period photos, values, historical notes, so if you want to put the collection in a vault, you’ll still have a Softimeline Project to browse and share.
You are a public relations firm.
Display selected clients over time and the results you’ve achieved; perhaps organize your timelines by the type of client. Financial, Technology, Manufacturing, Political, whatever.
Create a plan for the house sitter, pet sitter, or baby sitter.
Getting out of town for a long week-end or an extended vacation will be a lot more relaxing when you know things at home are being taken care of according to schedule. You’ll have categories like Feeding the Cat, Indoor Plants, Deck Plants, Grandpa’s Medicine, Doctors or Vets, you know, all those things you would worry about otherwise.
Robber barons or great American capitalists, depending on your viewpoint.
An interesting time in American history, Rockefeller and the rest each get their own timeline, you see their lives and activities in context to each other.
You’re a salesman, each of your major accounts gets a timeline.
Track their sales volume, when SKU’s were added to their mix, personnel, new stores. Or make a Softimeline project for each account to show more detailed information.
You really love fishing.
You might have categories for different types of fish, Places, Companions; the grid here could be divided into hours or days depending on the length of the trip.
My favorite books.
Put them in by categories like Philosophy, Mystery, Religion, Technology. You might order them by when they were published or when you read them, whichever makes the most sense to you.
Geology, nature, tectonics... time is of the essence.
The possibilities are abundant, whether you chronicle a few thousand years or 300 million years, geology is about change, perfect for a Softimeline project.
The history of a great newspaper or other publication.
Different types of news each get their own timeline, Main News, Editorial, Sports, so you can look back at stories, photos, writers since the paper was founded.
You are an Egyptologist.
The grid can be set to centuries or decades if desired, each mummy might have a category with the possibility of categories for DNA, artifacts and treasure, wall graphics, in fact, any graphics are perfect because Softimeline is all about VisualTimeline publishing.
Your favorite athletes in your favorite sport.
Chronicle the careers of your 12 favorite baseball (football) (basketball) (hockey) (whatever) players over any period be it a season or a decade, showing their team affiliations and career highlights on your Event Pages.
The history of your hospital or medical center.
Categories might be departments, facilities as added, benefactors, maybe put the finished project on a PC or touch screen in the lobby or waiting rooms, or use it for new employee orientation.
Amusement parks, fun weekends, since the kids were small.
Parks carnivals and Fairs are a great place to shoot photos; now here’s a great place to put them. Your kids will really appreciate it. Imagine being able to go back and re-live the fun places and memories of your youth.
You love books about art, graphics and photography.
Perhaps you create categories using ten sub-categories in the Dewey Decimal System as your guide. In most cases, a text based index is fine for books, but here’s a way to create a visual index that’s fun to browse.
What inflation does to the cost of things.
Categories are housing, food, clothing, cars, medicine, etc. Use old ads as visuals or dig into that shoe box for pictures of that three bedroom house you bought for $12,500 in 1959.
Our friends over the years.
Hometown friends, San Diego friends, camping friends, garden club friends, college friends, neighbor friends, business friends, jazz friends, car club friends, work for my categories, but yours will probably be different.
Great British automotive marques.
Hope someone will do a Softimeline project which chronicles the automotive industry in Great Britain so we can browse categories like Aston Martin, AC, Austin Healey, Bentley, Cooper, Jaguar, MG, Morgan, Riley, Triumph, etc. over the years.
Budding young artists.
Finally, a place to put those drawings and paintings the kids bring home from school. Softimeline, your PC and an inexpensive scanner are all you need to chronicle your children's’ art talent over the years. You might not even need a scanner; try shooting the artwork with your digital camera.
A review of TV news channels.
Station call letters become the categories, grid is days or weeks. A mouse-over reveals the lead story for that day; Event Pages go into detail on how this channel covered the story so you can compare and document any news bias.
Agents do a real estate review on their community.
Record the history of home selling prices over the years. Categories might be: Below $200k, $200-300k, $300-400k, etc. Mouse over a picture to reveal a sales price, click to the Event Page for details. Put the Softimeline Project on your laptop and take it with you to help get a listing or close a sale.
Maybe you are magazine publisher.
What if you could sell a visual index of your issues for the last 5 years. If you were an automotive publication, categories might be: Ignition, Fuel system, Suspension, Brakes... Event Pages either show the complete story or encapsulate it with a provision for ordering a back issue. Give the DVD away as a promotion for new subscriptions.
This day in history over the years.
A visual index of this day in history (birthday or other favorite day) in different categories like Births & Deaths, Politics, Wars & Battles, The Arts, Technology, Business, Sports and Recreation, etc.
Catalog a bunch of your favorite videos.
Suppose you love British cops and sleuths. You’ll have a category for Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, Inspector Morse, Sherlock Holmes and more. Let the grid reflect the year of production to view how the character and the actor have matured over time.
You are a retailer.
Make a category for each of your major product lines. As an example, you might include Bedroom, Bathroom, Patio, Flooring, etc., but it works no matter what you sell. Before long, you'll have an invaluable sales, training and reference tool, complete with pictures.
You are a golf nut.
Categories will be your 12 favorite golf courses. Use the "custom" designation for time slices and let the units be holes. Now populate your timelines and Event Pages with photos of you and your friends playing each hole of each course.
Use minutes for your time slices.
Any game or event whose duration is determined by minutes is a candidate for a Softimeline project. Whether basketball, football or polo, your categories will often be the players, enabling you to track their activities over the entire game.
You create the perfect smile.
A variety of patient histories, each with its own timeline category will illustrate the steps and progress encompassed in the months necessary to achieve the perfect smile.