Time-Surfer: Time-Based Graphical Access to Document Content

This demonstration presents a novel interactive graphical interface to document content focusing on the time dimension. The objective of Time-Surfer is to let users search and explore information related to a specific period, event, or event participant within a document. The system is based on the automatic detection not only of time expressions, but also of events and temporal relations. Through a zoomable timeline interface, it brings users an dynamic picture of the temporal distribution of events within a document. Time-Surfer has been successfully applied to history and biographical articles from Wikipedia.