Web: Fantasy author Terry Prachett's Discworld series has spanned over 30 years of books and short stories, and there's no way for a newbie to know where to jump in and start. Luckily, All Timelines is a web service that will tell you, along with guides for virtually every other pop culture franchise.

Instagram, like Twitter before it, is starting to learn that there's no money in letting your best posts disappear to the ravages of time. The service is now experimenting with an algorithmic instead of chronological timeline.

Microsoft Word is a handy text processor, but it also has often-forgotten design features built in. Office Expert Helen Bradley walks through how you can use SmartArt feature to create a timeline for project planning.

Timelines are excellent for visualising change over time, but most timeline generators limit you to a single timeline. Web application Preceden features parallel timelines and accompanying charts.

If you've got the same email address you had around 1999, do a search for your oldest mail with "FWD" in the subject. If digging through the memories of web-cam-observed coffee pots, "Hello, my future girlfriend," and other proto-memes brings a wry smirk to your face, you're going to love the Internet Meme timeline, an omni-collection of more than 250 highlights (if you're feeling generous) of viral sites, videos, and concepts that's been viewed nearly a million times on timeline-sharing site Dipity. Many of the expandable data points bring up their relevant pics, videos, and animations, and the Dipity director who created this gem is regularly tweaking it. Go ahead, click around and dig into memories you'd long since archived.

Internet Memes

If a timeline is the best way to display the data you have on hand, turn to interactive web application Timetoast. Once you create your timeline, viewers can click on date points to see what is significant about the event. From there they can expand the entry to see pictures and additional information. Timetoast is free to register and use. Here are a few more ways you can make a timeline of events.

Timetoast Timelines