Twile is a website where you can upload your tree and create timelines for your family. It is free and accepting feedback. Speak now or forever wonder why you cannot find what you need.
As soon as I learned
this tool became free, I signed up and started to test it. I had been
waiting for a tool that would not only list my ancestor's events
(birth, residence, marriage, death, etc) in chronological order, but
also, put their lives in context.
Location, location,
location.
I had used the maps
where you can pin down the events geographically, which gives you a
nice idea of the cultural origins, migrations and clues about where
else to find records. But it became clear, early enough, that the
town where my great-grandmother grew up, although in the same
geographical spot, was not the same in which her daughter grew up, nor
where her grand daughters were born. And you should see it now,
because you can, if you go to Google Maps and use the street view
tool. But how about then ? And when is then exactly ?
« You are
forgetting the fourth dimension, Marty ».
Time is the key
resource when using Twile. You sign up, upload your tree (even
transfer from FamilySearch, although it has some issues with
« special » characters, like simple accents) and you
chose the Timeline view, which you can customize to suit your needs.
At least some of them for the moment.
So, what's in the
timeline ?
The most basic
information would be the recognizable fields you already have in your
tree (mainly birth, marriage and death), and then you can add
milestones (education, voyages, prices, recruitment, etc).
You can chose to
display the timeline of either one person, you and your direct family
and, the whole tree (meaning everybody you have transferred or
uploaded). So, for example, you could visualize how the events of two
houses occur in parallel until their children get married ; or
whether the length of generations is even among branches.
Context, context,
context.
But what makes it
really stand out is the possibility of adding historical events, this
is what really gives you context. However, it is highly biased
towards USA history. You do get WWI and WWII events and Inventions,
which I emphatically recommend to understand why there are no
pictures of your 5x grandfather's car (no, not even on Instagram).
 |
| Screen capture of several juxtaposed branches (from Argentina, Spain and Italy)... plus the invention of the car. |
I decided not to be
shy and send them some direct feedback (down right corner talking
balloon that reads Talk to us) and they answered later by email (not
a bot!) : they are working on it (already aware of the special character's problem) ... and they are open to
suggestions.
Make History Yours
So I started to
brainstorm (with me, myself and I, these gals are nuts...) some ideas
and I'm still pondering whether I should share them and how. Here are some of them:
- Go Global: of course, world, country or regional history are the first things to add (no-brainers, no umbrellas required).
- Contemporaneous but not mixed: I would also like to display the lines of different branches in parallel so if they their origins are different you can customize their historical events (say Italians and Irish).
- Stop clutter: The ability to narrow the time-frame or the branch we want to display would be useful too (maybe it is there, I haven't seen it, I know you can delete events but didn't dare to) to avoid clutter. And export or print would be nice too (the image was a screen capture).
Considering
that it is a free tool, and hoping it stays as such, it should be
able to profit from user generated content, which users can upload
and share, evaluate and improve, like packs of events for a specific
purpose (fashion, political movements, musical trends, etc). Let's
also go wiki and encourage the experts to validate content.
Those were just the
first raindrops of the brainstorm.
Try Twile, send feedback and let's
go dance in the rain.
