About Me

  •

    Adam Behringer

    Seattle, Washington USA

    Adam is the founder of BEEDOCS, an artisan software company that makes great timeline software for Mac OS X.

  • Enter your e-mail to receive blog updates:

Previous Posts

BEEDOCS Shirts

  • Bleached Bee T-Shirt

Archives

v3: Make a chart of... ANYTHING

Monday, January 17, 2011

Ever since I introduced 3D timelines back in May 2008, we have received many requests from people who want to use our interactive 3D presentations to display information that goes beyond events with calendar dates.

I am excited to announce to you today, that version 3 will allow you to chart anything in an interactive chart. Anything that can be represented with a number, that is.

When you create a new document, you will be presented with three timeline types to choose from. The first is "Dates & Times" which bases events on dates that could be circled on a calendar, or pointed to on a clock. Up until this point, every timeline you made was in this category. Examples include:

  • 1/17/11 10:28 AM
  • 10:28 AM
  • 7 de agosto de 2009
  • 590 B.C.
  • 2009年8月7日
  • January 17, 2011

Last week, I announced Geological Scale timelines. This type allows timeline spans in the billions, trillions, or quintillions of years. Examples include:

  • 5 Billion BCE
  • 1.3 Trillion
  • 5,000,000,000,000,000,000 CE

The third timeline type, and the answer to last week's Guess the New Feature post, is called Quantities and it allows you to chart anything that can be represented with a number. It works by allowing you to specify a prefix or suffix for the numbers in a chart. Here are some examples:

  • $150,000.00 USD
  • Day 3
  • Page #520
  • Mile 253
  • 60 Hz
  • 1.52 ㎟
  • 0

Note that number lines charted with the Quantities type will include a zero in the number scale. The date-based types do not because there is no "year zero" in the Gregorian Calendar.

I'd like to point out that any of these three types can be displayed in a 3D presentation or published to the web. Also, any of the three types can be customized with our new Custom Date Labels feature for even greater flexibility.

We are really excited to see what new kinds of charts you will make with this new flexibility!

Labels: , , ,

6 Comments:

Blogger Clint — January 17, 2011 9:23 AM

Adam:

If you haven't already, could you be sure to include support for MYA ("million years ago"), and the like? In evolutionary and paleontology, it is a common measure.

Thanks!

Best wishes,
Clint

Blogger Adam Behringer — January 17, 2011 9:29 AM

Clint -

Yes you will be able to use "MYA" with the Quantities format as long as all of the events in your timeline used that same format.

You will be able to make a Geological Scale chart and then override the date format for particular events with a MYA label if that is easier for your particular use.

Anonymous Anonymous — January 17, 2011 11:38 AM

I think I'll be using this for timetables where we talk about "week 2", "week 3" etc at the planning stage rather than specific dates. Very, very handy. Wish I had it now, in fact! Could really use it on a project I'm involved in.
I can see it being useful for project planning in general, as well, where we talk about months or weeks, but not about specific dates. Very nice.

C'mon, c'mon! We're waiting! ;-)

Blogger Clint — January 18, 2011 8:38 AM

Adam:

Most excellent!

Best wishes,
Clint

Blogger Unknown — January 18, 2011 10:18 AM

Adam -

Yes! As a transactional attorney, I have been looking for a way to explain the elder law journey or the process of designing an estate plan. Elise will attest that I've been trying every way possible to get this done – and now, finally, Timeline can do it.

THANK YOU!


Victor Medina

Blogger blakeinla — January 18, 2011 5:41 PM

Thank you! I've been waiting for this for a long time!

-Blake

Post a Comment

<< Home