ollie
I like going through my media chronologically, in all aspects. I started with wwi. After immersing myself in WWI media, docs, literature, art, etc for about a month, the joy of those early 20s jazz recording sprang to life and didn't seem trite in the slightest. I've actually been doing this for a couple of years now and I'm in the early 90s now. Its a fun experiment that I'd highly recommend.

I want someone to invent an app so people can build historical/chronological playlists with friends. It would be cool if people could have a best of 1990 cross media playlist to crowdsource

... or a best of 1782

jessica amber murray
i was building chronological playlists on youtube for a while, but have kind of let it sit since i moved here. 60s - 00s. plus one for "serialism" which i took a broad definition of to include any kind of abstract jazz. and i suppose i'm building something like that on my web page, slowly, although it's cross-linked to literature and other things as well. i think it's a neat idea, too. http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIx9xafrMCgYqDYIp4SK6tA/videos?view=1

ollie
I have this book, its a historical atlas of world history. I think it forms an excellent template for how people should interact with their media. Sort of like a google earth with a timeline that media could be tagged to by date.

I'm meeting with someone in the next month to develop the idea. If you have any input I'd be interested to hear about it.

I want it to be a crowdsourced documentary organiser that can serve as a tool for historical schooling.

jessica amber murray
i think that sounds like a lot of programming! i've played around with geographical lists to organize bands in scenes (montreal post-rock, or seattle grunge, or whatever) and can see the appeal to approaching music this way, at least up until about 2000 when the internet sort of abolished the local music scene by opening up the spread of ideas. the kind of isolation that created the washington/oregon punk scene probably isn't going to happen again. what we've seen more recently are scenes jumping up around hashtags. a good example of that is "chillwave". it's interesting, but is it anachronistic? and, if so, if the focus is *history*, does that matter? i was actually thinking of building something like this for my programming project. i ran it by a bunch of people and they all questioned whether there was any kind of demand for it. my answer was always "well, i'd use it.". but after thinking about it, i sort of think they're right. i mean, i like the idea - i'd use the site. but it's hard to see why people would move from spotify (although i should point out that spotify didn't exist at the time, and my idea may have been interpreted as an alternate model for spotify that took in aspects of discogs, which also didn't exist, and timeline, which also didn't exist....) or last.fm for that reason, or why the media companies would license it. i've been slowly building up a timeline on facebook, though. just my own records. just a hobby. but i do hope that, one day, it's a large resource. having something like that opened up and crowd-sourced would definitely be interesting. but, again, why would people use it instead of wikipedia, besides the gui? so, i guess my input is it's a cool idea that's going to require a lot of work and will probably have a hard time sustaining itself. but i'd use it. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jessicas-Music-Collection/505092896244390?ref=hl

ollie
I don't know a thing about programming, but the first step from my basic perspective is meta-tagging fields for detailed date information, so your date tag for Sgt. Pepper says June 1, 1967 instead of 1967.

As for local scenes being relevant or not, think of how this could be applied as an event promotion/ local media collection tool.

jessica amber murray
you'd probably end up storing it all in xml files with those tags and then putting a searchable interface over top of it for usability. the user would be able to construct a timeline of desired events by genre, individual, whatever so that timelines of 'john lennon, 1960-1980' or 'punk rock, 1976-1996' could be constructed.

ollie
Bring in the geographic tag and it becomes a historical media atlas. With a calendrical interface, people can contextualise their media historically.

Computer, what was happening in October 1962?

its already on wikipedia, just not the direct link to the media

First James Bond movie, first Beach Boys album, first Beatles single, Cuban Missile Crisis.

jessica amber murray
yeah. it's a neat idea. i wish you had asked me this five years ago, though, when i was in the right head space. right now, i'm personally more interested in building a personalized timeline that focuses on my own writing, reviews, interpretations, etc than opening it up to crowdsourcing and objective analysis. but i do think the latter would be interesting to see exist.

ollie
That's where it becomes a promotional tool.

A database for event footage so that people can familiarise themselves with a local art scene.

I'm looking forward to developing it. Know a couple of teachers who think it will be a good teaching tool for history.

I'll keep you updated.

jessica amber murray
i'll just point out that if you compare it to something like discogs or librarything, something that bogs those sites down is the user content. wildly inaccurate or borderline reviews by people that don't really know what they're talking about. i guess that's more something to worry about down the line. but i think the major usability challenge on the timeline is likely to be clutter. maybe another example to look at is the phenomena of the soundcloud comment.

ollie
I see it working more like facebook, where you add users based on the quality of their content. For instance, there would be some interest in having an Idle No More or an Oxford History department newsfeed for tagged media.