 TimeMap TMJava is a novel mapping applet which generates complete interactive maps with a few simple lines of html. It provides a way of easily enriching web pages with historical or contemporary information that goes far beyond static jpg map images. It's easy for beginners, yet provides completely customisable power and distributed backend database connectivity for the expert. It's free for personal use.
TimeMap's unique time-handling provides an engaging and intuitive method of delivering historical, community, government, research and business information. Combining mapping and the time dimension gives new ways of visualising urban growth, the spread of empires, heritage sites, environmental change, weather patterns, traffic flow, earthquakes, mobile network faults, and much more ― ranging in time scale from millions of years to seconds.
TimeMap time-filters and animates maps on the fly, connects to datasets anywhere on the web and can search for and load thousands of local maps dynamically as you zoom and pan. TimeMap can filter huge datasets server-side and download only the data needed, or work standalone off a CD. It adapts legends dynamically as scale changes and generates hyperlinks on-the-fly between objects on the map and web pages, and is completely customisable with XML. Yet the applet weighs in at only 350K!
TimeMap's Windows tool, TMWin, allows you to build and publish interactive maps on your web site without any programming skills. You can use your own data or map data from the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative's (www.ecai.org) data clearinghouse.
For advanced users TimeMap can be extensively customised with XML and JavaScript. TMJava source code is available to members of the TimeMap Open Source Community(see under Community).
The TimeMap project team can provide rapid response support to user, from neophyte to IT professional, as well as a full range of custom database and TimeMap programming services.
Latest news (March 2007)
The project is currently developing improved Flash animation output and a combined map/timeline display of historical events. Historical events are stored in our collaborative social bookmarking/bibliographic database, Heurist. Visit HeuristScholar.org and log in as guest + guest for a preview (planned release May 2007).
This development will allow students, teachers and members of the public to build a cutting-edge historical event map/timeline simply by entering dates, descriptions and map locations in the database, and attach wiki-based commentary and threaded discussions to events. A pilot version of the timeline builder should be available for public use in May.
March 2007: We are expanding our staff by two new positions to work on end-user support and application development, documentation and the much-delayed release of the Open Source version of TimeMap. Both will be in place by 2nd April.
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