beta.Miomi.com - It's all About Time

Timelines are incredibly useful study tools, especially when you've got a pending world history exam and need to get all your dates straight. Timelines are also an interesting way to visualize personal stories. The Germany-based Miomi lets everyone and anyone create timelines to showcase and share with the world. In theory, it seems like a much more interesting way to tell a story than a simple linear text. Timelines on the site represent everything you could think of—from Prince's concert tour to Steve McClaren and earthquakes in southern California. Miomi gives you flexibility. Each moment on the timeline is represented by a photo or illustration and text. You'll also find maps and related moments from other community members. Timelines may be browsed by moment, location or people. There's a voting feature which lets you love or hate a particular moment, along with a historical relevance slider which lets users determine if an occurrence has any meaning beyond that of the individual. Registration is required to use the site.

"This is our Global Timeline
Use it to browse through personal, historical and contemporary moments and timelines.
Miomi is a new frontier on the Internet, taking all the world's information and the histories of all people and putting them together in a useful, easy-to-use way. Our ambitions include:
• conquering the fourth dimension (er, time, that is );
• moving oral history online;
• creating a user-generated history of the world.
Everyone from Ghandi to your great uncle Eric to you yourself can be on Miomi, sharing and experiencing all those moments in time."

Miomi gives users an interesting and rather novel way to share not only their life stories but also their personal interests and activities. All stories can be interrelated as members post similar experiences, thus creating a web of intersecting timelines and moments. All in all it's got nice user features and presents a good alternative to simple texts.

Miomi has a muddled feel. Timelines are presented in a zigzag tangle and individual moments are presented as slide show pictures and text, but the two are too separate from each other. It would be more visually interesting if the two were better connected.