Re: The Journal 4.0

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Note: This message is from the outliners.com archive kindly provided by Dave Winer.

Outliners.com Message ID: 2333

Posted by 100341.2151
2004-12-08 19:53:47

Steve Z,

> something that combines journaling with a milestone mapping or something like that?

Yes, “The Life Journal” (TLJ) comes closest - in fact it’s the only product I have seen that really combines daily journaling with features to help one reconstruct longer (past) timeframes. The graphical timeline feature in TLJ is potentially very helpful here as it enables one to situate each remembered event along the timeline and to build up a picture of what was happening within a particular time period. The events are also listed in a column in chronological order beneath the timeline display. When selected, a journal page is opened for the day (or approximate date) in question and the details of the event can be read.

The problem with TLJ is the new-age “frills” and somewhat clunky implementation (IMO). But this seems such an obviously useful idea, with many possible applications (autobiography; history; genealogy; investigations of accidents, crimes, etc), that I can’t believe it isn’t being developed somewhere for this purpose.

For example, I had thought that historians might be using a similar type of notetaking/journalling/timelining software to help them work up a detailed picture of particular time periods in terms of salient events.

CaseSoft, incidentally, does produce a timeline program for trial lawyers to plot event chronologies in cases, but it is little more than a flow-chart. Most other timeline programs are equally simple - strong on graphical, but weak on the recording of associated textual records.

TLJ seems unique at present.

Derek

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