3920 LivingTime 2.0.4 is something genuinely different. It is described by its developer, Lifescope Inc., as a "personal memory manager" to record and chart your life's events creating a "memory panorama" of your past � a combination of diary, logbook, calendar, photo album, graphical timeliner, and charting program.

You can use LivingTime to collect, collate, organize, and review the significant events that have happened in your life, or the life of a parent, child or other loved one. In addition to composing an individual's life history, the program provides access to thousands of world events that can be imported, to provide additional context and perspective to remembering one's experiences.

Version 2.0 of LivingTime supports both Windows and Macintosh (Classic OS 8.1 through 9.2.2 and OS X 10.2.6 up), but its appearance is definitely Windows-esque, although the Mac OS X version I checked out for this review wasn't exactly unattractive, there is definitely a visual clash one experiences when switching from programs made to Apple interface standards to ones ported from a Windows version. Windows-style icons, fonts and interface windows just don't have anywhere near the elegance of Mac OS visuals. This program has a friendly, cheerful face, but would look a lot better if it followed Apple conventions.

This program is a powerful tool at a reasonable price, and the concept is appealing. However, its operation is relatively complex and not especially intuitive, so be prepared to spend some quality time with the extensive tutorial material that is included. Also, it's a hefty download � 30 MB for the compressed installer.

LivingTime is downloadable as a free trial that can be converted to a full-featured install if you purchase a license. The trial mode:
� limits you to 15 startups or 15 hours of use, whichever lasts longer;
� brands timeline charts with a �generated by an unregistered copy� message;
� after expiration, still allows you to export any events you created.

That should provide you with ample time to determine if LivingTime is for you.

Once you have LivingTime downloaded and installed, the QuickStart window presents you with an embarrassment of choices in terms of what sort of Help you want to access to get up to speed: Overviews, step-by-step tutorials, movies, Quickhelp, User Guide, and ToolTips.

There is also a convenient and extensive Glossary of Terms to help with your orientation.

The program is password-protected at startup, and program provides for four levels of security:

� Password Protection. At the highest level, the correct password is required when the program is first started.

� Private Event. Checking this box will prevent any reference to that event from appearing on any other view, when Privacy Mode is on. It will seem as if that event does not exist. The checkbox is accessible from the Main Form and Speed Entry views only.

� Hide Personal Note and Hide Detail. These are checkboxes on the Main Form that can hide the contents of the Detail or Personal Note fields on most other views and during exports. When so marked, the contents of these fields for that particular event are invisible anywhere else except on the Main Form, Journal, and Diary views.

� Encrypt Personal Note. As additional security against sector-level file readers and for exported backups, the Personal Note field can be encrypted. To read the encypted text when in the program, click the Encrypt/Decrypt icon.

It is beyond the scope of this review to exhaustively detail all the features of this program. The LivingTime user manual can be accessed on the LifeScope Website from within the program (live Internet connection required., but here is an overview of major features.

There are a variety of modes to view data contained in LivingTime. In the Main Form, all the available event fields appear, and is the best view for entering information manually. For your information to be most useful with the least effort, you will want to enter, at minimum, these three specific fields: Date, Event, and Category.

LivingTime can streamline your data-entry process when you create a new event record. On the Helpers panel in Preferences, you can select the checkbox Pre-fill Fields. Another preference, Show Days, is the option to display the day of the week on which the event occurred. When that checkbox is marked, you will see the name of the day (Monday, Tuesday, etc.) beneath a valid complete event date. If the Pre-fill Fields preference is on, LivingTime carries forward the month and year from the prior record. To enter a different date, type it in or click on the specific Month and Day buttons, and select the year from the pop-up Year menu.

Dates back to the year 1000 may be entered, but dates before October 1582 when the Gregorian Calendar replaced the Julian Calendar will technically be off by ten days {unless you happen to be old-calendar Eastern Orthodox, in which case this distinction will be completely familiar to you).

The event name field is a brief, one-line name for an event. "Yosemite backpacking" for example. This text will display on the Chart view, so it's best to be concise but descriptive. Other fields, Detail and Personal Note, each allow you to enter more information (more than 12,000 words each if you're really prolix).

The Source Tracker helps you keep track of sources you've considered for even information. However, I encountered a bug in which the Source Tracker window refused to close, with the red close button starying grayed out. Had to quit the program to get rid of it.

Events should be classified by category, especially when the quantity of events is large. You may rename, add, delete, or merge categories at any time, from the Categories view. Other fields included on the Main Form view serve special purposes to enhance the utility of the program. You can choose to use some or all of these fields which include:

Through Date
If an event had a duration of more than a day, enter the end date here.

Rank
This field allows you to set the relative priority of the event

Category 2
You may add a sub-category, as desired.

Detail
In the Detail field is where you can record "color commentary."

Personal Note
A Detail field with cypher protection.

Money
Provides a convenient financial tracking method.

Anniversary Reminder
When this checkbox is marked, this event will appear on the Anniversaries view of the Calendar window.

Media
A place to add photographs or other graphics, movies, and sounds to your event.
If supported by your system software and particular application, you can simply drag & drop. Click and hold on your graphic, then drag it to the Media field. Copy and paste and insert from disk are available as well

Editing tools include Find and Replace, and Replace All functions, and a spellchecker.

LivingTime provides four primary types of views: Form, List, Calendar, Chart, as well as two specialty views, Media and Categories.

The form views (Main Form, Journal, Diary) display one event at a time, and thus have room to provide more depth for each event. The Main Form presents the most information about an event in one screen, while the Journal and Diary views provide an extra large area for the Detail and Personal Note fields, respectively.

The list views display one event per line, and can be used with the program's Find and Sort capabilities. List views also have the capability to use the full vertical height of your computer screen.

Calendar View displays the events for the month or day selected, and in the in the same window Anniversary view lists the events tagged with Anniversary Reminder.

Chart view illustrates the continuity (and discontinuities) of your life. Unlike the other list views, which are basically just rows and columns of information, the Chart view has more complex display functions.

Viewing Categories is primarily a screen for creating and managing your category list.

Most views have the Print icon at the bottom of the screen that sends a full-page version of the form or list you're viewing to the printer. You may also "print on parchment," which prints the same layout but on a graphic matching the parchment theme of the views.

Exporting options include:

Copy Chart � on all of the Chart views�normal, portrait, and full screen�you may copy the chart you see drawn and paste it into another program.

Exporting to Text

Exporting to HTML

Importing options include text, Excel (.xls) single-sheet workbook, Microsoft Outlook (via Excel format export from Outlook) and Palm Desktop (via tab-separated text file from Palm Desktop)

LivingTime comes with six demo Public Event Timeline (PET) sets. You can obtain these in non-demo form, and other PETs from our online repository at http://www.timesalive.com/ , formatted specifically for LivingTime. When you register LivingTime, your confirmation email also contains your UserID and Password to access this site.

A sampling of Public Event Timelines available (or soon to be available) for LivingTime:
� Awards: Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes (1944 on)
� Awards: The Emmys, Tonys, & Grammys (1974 on)
� Celebrity Obits (1960 on)
� Celestial Events (1970 on)
� Feature Movies(1960 on)
� Financial Indicators (1940 on)
� Music Hit Singles by Backbeat (1949 on)
� Billboard Charts Top 100 Songs (1946 on)
� Personal Computer Industry Milestones (1970 on)
� Science, Invention and Technology (1960 on)
� Space Exploration (1957 on)
� Sports Records Smashed (1950 on)
� TV Programs, First Seasons (1952 on)
� U.S. Presidents, Senators, and Congressmen (1915 on)
� U.S. Weather Patterns (1938 on)
� Wall Street Journal Headlines (1925 on)
� Wars, Conflicts, and Police Actions (1940 on)
� World Events (1950 on)

LivingTime provides several routines to help tidy up your data, both after questionable imports and before exports:

� Trim leading & trailing spaces
� Clean 'illegal' characters from Event Name and Category
� Trim surrounding double-quotes
� Convert double-quotes to single-quotes
� Dumb-down quotes (from � � to " & � � to ' ' )
� Educate quotes (from " to � or � & ' to � or � )

LivingTime is highly customizable. There are some three dozen different preference settings than are included in the following panels:

Personal Info panel
Display panel
Behaviors panel
Helpers panel
Preferences on Calendar View
Preferences on Chart View

Check the User Manual for full details.

LivingTime is an interesting and fairly unique piece of software. It reminds me a bit of the Mac-only database and information manager application Boswell, although Boswell has a different functional focus. Like Boswell, LivingTime requires a bit of a steep learning curve climb, but the effort is rewarded.

System requirements for the OS X version are at least a 128MB Power Macintosh running Mac OS 10.2.6 or later. Running on my 700 MHz G3 iBook with 640 MB of RAM, I found that LivingTime itself responded quite smartly, but some other programs slowed down when it was running. This would probably be a lot less noticeable or a non-issue with a faster machine.

LivingTime is a difficult program to evaluate adequately in a few days' use. I expect that its full potential would take months or even years to realize. However, I expect that those who are into this type of data collection will find it an excellent organizing and retrieval tool. If that sounds like you, download the demo and check it out. Your only risk is getting hooked on personal memory management.

LivingTime sells for $49.95.

For more information, visit:
http://www.livingtime.com



***



Charles W. Moore


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