Our friend and colleague, AMD of info-fetishist.org, blogged about a timeline creator called Dipity. Her post reminded me that I wanted to check out options for creating timelines after a student asked about chronologies at the reference desk.
Thus, I learned about xtimeline, where you can explore existing timelines, create your own, share timelines and chat with others about their or your timeline.

The quality reflects the democratic spirit of the site, anyone can create a timeline using whatever sources they choose. For example, most of the content for the Virginia Woolf timeline comes from Wikipedia rather than a mix of sources. For those looking for a scholarly timeline, I wouldn’t use this as your only source.

xtimeline is easy enough for a class to use for homework or for a in class activity. I made a quick timeline for infodoodads to test out xtimeline. The creator is clear and easy to use and you can choose to use the regular or quickly add events feature. You can embed photos, flash or videos, though I stuck to photos. The text editor uses standard tools for editing content and inserting web links.  Timelines can be made public or private and discussion can be open to the public or limited to editors.  Overall, fun tool and easy to use.