I want to send a shout out to anyone working on the Simile Timeline project.  Born out of the Semantic Interoperability of Metadata and Information in unLike Environments (SIMILE) project conducted by the MIT Libraries and MIT CSAIL, they are part of a suite of tools that enable visualization of seemingly massive datasets. We are implementing an in-house solution for planning, and the timeline is fast, slick, and solid.

I was rockin’ the maps with a version of timeline integrated with OpenLayers, appropriately named maptimeline. Abandoning all grasp of reality, I then added a Simile Timeplot to the interface, too.   I would have liked to be able to integrate the time plot and the timeline tighter, but at this point, that integration is still a bit clunky.

Coming back down to earth, I dropped the map and the timeplot, as they didn’t add value to an already cluttered interface. Nonetheless,  I am really impressed with how well all of these tools perform.