Timeline software is beginning to emerge to help present events in time in a more interesting way similar to how Apple has implemented time machine effects for recovering backup files.
Bee Doc’s has two software versions for creating timelines with the second one including some 3D effects. The software can be used to create editable timelines that can be stored locally or posted online as a movie.
Kronomy is a beta web service for creating timelines on their site and embedding the timeline on another site. Dates are not shown horizontally on the bottom but along with the list of events. Kronomy has a nice feature of supporting interesting graphic backgrounds. By posting content to the site you are granting the site to full rights to the content. Ameans for exporting content out of Kronomy isn’t immediately apparent. You can restrict access to your timelines to people in your contact list. You can also just keep them to yourself but that kind of defeats the purpose of having them online.
Circavie is another beta web service for creating timelines. It is part of the AOL community and you can sign on using your AIM id which is a free registration. It has more flexibility in that you can display the timeline online but also embed it at another site and create an RSS feed. This site also doesn’t have an obvious way to download all your content.
While the online betas are interesting Bee Doc’s seems the best bet especially if you want to have more flexibility and control of your content.