Projects like the Internet Archive let web users visit old versions and archives of websites via url search, but a new service called Zoetrope will offer new, interactive ways to “browse backward” through time. Developed by research scientist Mira Dontcheva of Adobe Systems, the soon to be released tool offers visual browsing with a click and drag scrollbar, moving the user backward and forward through time by hours, days, or months. Specific details and pieces of data (i.e., the price of a toy on Amazon.com) can also be zoomed in on by placing a cursor “lens” over that area of the webpage to see how it has changed over time.
Technology Review explains some of Zoetrope’s more advanced features:
[Zoetrope can] recognize a price as it goes up or down and will show the results as a graph. It’s also possible to draw lenses on different websites and sync them in order to carry out a historical comparison. For example, a user could use one lens to track weather information and another lens to track movie-attendance figures. Looking at how both lenses change over time might reveal a correlation between bad weather and high movie turnout. Zoetrope can also track some pieces of data as they move about a page over time.
Have a look at a demo for the new web time machine at Technology Review’s site.
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