Calizo

Calizo is a calendar application using a timeline visualization with nearly unrestricted zooming. Thereby historical timelines, family history, and biographical information are manageable in the same way as day-to-day tasks, project management or life planing.
Calizo is an open-source cross-plattform desktop application.

Basic idea
A linear timeline provides the possibility to arrange events and time periods at very different time scales. By dynamically changing scales, i.e. zooming in and out, time scales of astronomy and evolution fall into the same category as historic, biographic or family history time scales. Also timescales of projects or your day to day tasks then are of the same kind. To go further also events in the future are manageable this way, to provide the possibility to plan and develop alternatives.
By linking files, folders or URLs to events and time periods, this time view display not only visualizes information, but also allows you to access information in a time organized manner. For example your future project event not only allows you to see when you plan to start and how long you plan to work for it, but also provides a direct link to the folder where you have all the files related to this project.
Thereby a general calendar application is provided, combining not only features of genealogy, project management, and scheduling, but also provide a file manager like way of organizing links and files in a temporal order.

Of course a timeline can also be drawn with a non-linear time mapping. Like a logarithmic mapping, showing events denser on the left and more spread out on the right. Or an interactive lense acting as a magnifier could also provide interesting further possibilities of handling time related information. Another feature of parallel timelines is comparablity - e.g. you can directly compare the biographic information of your grandfather with your own, alligned by birth date, so that you compare life events at the same age of the person.
The potential in my oppinion is huge - and Calizo tries to do its best to provide a first investigation in the direction of this domain of temporal personal and interpersonal information management. Calizo is open-source under the GPL licence, and developers are welcome to join! Or to combine the timeline view developed here with other applications (like a zoomable time line view in a standard calendar program like sunbird, or a time line view as a plug in for Konqueror).

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