Istoriam 4+

If all you need is a simple timeline app, for the price, this is hard to beat. As a simple timeline app, I would give it 4½ stars, 5 if one minor bug was fixed. The bug is that the timeline only goes back to 400 BC, putting Socrates (470-399 BC) just off the timeline. He is there until one expands the horizontal spacing, and then he falls off the viewable screen.

Now, for the reasons I did not rate this product higher. There are a few advanced features that only partially work. You could give each entry children. In my timeline, I gave Friedrich Hayek a child, "The Road to Serfdom." Although there is a button on Friedrich Hayek's entry to see his children, it does not work unless the table is first expanded to show all children for all entries. Minor, but when there is a cluster of overlapping entries, it makes it hard to sort out the children. A more significant issue is that you pay extra to unlock the cause-to-effect feature (again, a very reasonable price). In my chart, I want to show a relationship between Karl Marx and Thorstein Veblen. Once you link the two, there is no visible way of showing the link. Both Marx and Veblen have a button showing which is the "cause" and which is the "effect"; there is no visible line connecting the two. Adam Smith and Alfred Marshall are linked, and Friedrich Hayek is related to Ludwig von Mises. You can not see who is linked to whom. There also is a feature of "pin" and "unpin," but nothing explains what they do, and I have not seen any behavior change when an entry is pinned or not. Their User Guide does not have an index nor a search feature, making it hard to locate the information you are looking for without scanning the entire User Manual.

If these issues were fixed, Istoriam would be worth several times what they are charging.

I am a retired project manager that built data and command centers for the government. Used MS Project, Merlin and other project tools including time line software like Eon — all great products. Presently I am building an addition on to our retirement home, and now I am again faced with visualizing design, permitting, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, masonry, carpentry, finish work and inspections and I’ve turned to more inovative ways to simply see why all these things will take a year. Istoriam has helped me discover the long-poles-in-the-tent and to converse more effectively with my General Contractor. Let’s see . . . $10 for Istoriam or $400 for MS Project? Yes, MS Project has more features— I have used them all. However, mostly in the past, I just wanted to convey the projected tasks and durations . . . Istoriam will do this in a few minutes and customizing Project with tasking and predecessors much longer.

I am also an author that has purchased much writing software and far more expensive time lines to sequence acts, scenes and conflicts. I have long sought a simple, easy-to-use time line software where I can focus on the event sequencing per act without having to learn and deal with all the subtleties of more complex software. Istoriam is that solution and to me, and is worth three times the price! Buy it, watch the video and you will be using it in ten minutes, very nice!

I'm using this to help creat my dad's memoirs. It's organized and thought-out well. The Help section does a great job of explaining the features and how to use them. The Import and Export features are especially useful for data input, and the ability to embed info, pictures, and even map locations and urls is extremely helpful.

Great value fot the price!