The goal of The Timeline of Everything is to provide a proof of concept for an alternative way for intuitively and quickly viewing history. Using the idea of “walking through history”, a timeline is used where the user can move step by step through the events of key points in history. In addition, users can create their own timelines utilizing already created events or creating their own new events. Each event in a timeline can have a multimedia element associated with it alongside text. Since there are multiple viewpoints of events, three ways to compare timelines were created. First, a simple merging of the two timelines where all events from both would be displayed; second, a contrast of the timelines showing the differences between the two; and lastly, a comparison showing the similarities. Upon doing one of these, a new timeline is generated showing the events, thus allowing an easy way to modify this new timeline.

Because this proof of concept might be used to show potential investors, a visually appealing site was the priority for this project. In the future, high traffic optimization and security need to be higher priority goals. The database is currently utilizing SQLite due to its ease of use, however for future implementation, MySQL or similar database should be used. Due to their similarities migrating from one to the other should be fairly easy. Another future goal is utilizing multiple date/time systems; by using a hh:mm:ss or frame system a movie maker could use this system to storyboard and arrange scenes. Using custom time systems, book, TV, and movie lovers could create timelines for their favorite stories.

The site is currently available at http://timeline.cs.vt.edu/