Timeline is an open source project that allows you to create a HTML5/jQuery timeline from a set of data. It is powerful enough to accept JSON as a data source, but it also works straight off a google docs spreadsheet. Play around with the included templates, and you get a clean looking slide show with a time control beneath.
Check out the user interface timeline.
It appears to work well with twitter, youtube, flickr and a few others. I’m planning on playing around with this as a way of communicating some of the qualitative data I’ve collected over the last year or so. It’s a shame there’s no interface (beyond a google spreadsheet) for building your own timeline; I imagine this to be a very powerful story-telling tool if provided to the right people, and with easy access to the media objects they care about. Of course, some kind of location integration would be nice too.
As a side note: I find it really interesting that even something that’s been traditionally technically inclined – like an open source project – uses phrases like “beautifully crafted” and “intuitive to use”. Does it represents a shift of focus towards user experience and design, or is it just a healthy dose of Apple-isms?