My experience with Dipity was overall, a good one. Once i had setup an account, the timeline was right there, ready to go. It was very easy to navigate the user interface and everything worked fairly smoothly. The only issues i had with it were some technical ones that could be easily fixed with some tweaks to the code behind the timeline programs. I think the fact that i used a Mac (which uses a special type of Java) contributed to the minor imperfections in the Dipity interface. When finishing adding an event, the function "Save and Add Another" didn't work; it only saved. Not the biggest deal but continually repeating the mundane task of finding and clicking the add event button can get a little boring. Other things included the disappearance of some of the events when clicking "View Timeline in Fullscreen." I suspected that i did not give the most recent events time enough to load onto the real timeline (Vs. my personal view timeline) and therefore did not show up in the fullscreen. After a couple refreshes,they eventually showed up. Another attribute of the UI that caught me off guard was the minimization of smaller events that were too close to other events. I just didn't expect it and it scared me for a quick second.
Interactive Timelines can be extremely useful in the future for things like tracking personal illness for medical use, tracking expenditures for personal or business finance, or tracking your movements over time on a vacation or other travel. Since time is always running, the possibilities are endless.
Awesome post, Kirk! Very nicely done!!
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