As I was poking around the Google YouTube API researching a side project, I stumbled upon this cool timeline widget by Dipity. There seems to be an endless amount of these “widget companies” that are worth much more than the name of their space leads you to believe (Slide, RockYou, etc).
Dipity caught my attention only because they came up with a very cool use of the YouTube API. However, they also came up with a very interactive widget that, if done properly, could be as compelling as Slide’s slide show widget. Basically, they allow you to create a timeline of anything and share them with the world. Here is a link to the Apple Timeline. Even cooler, they allow various views on the same timeline and allow multiple people edit the timeline.
Their biggest problem is going to be performance. I’m running Firefox 3 on a pretty beefy Ubuntu box and the rendering stinks. They’ll need to figure this out.
Bottom line, a compelling startup can be as simple as a different way to visualize something. It will be interesting to see if they are able to gain traction.
