Last week, I decided to play with an online tool called Dipity, which allows you to create nifty interactive timelines. I was looking for a way of bolstering my coverage of a new paper about reprogrammed stem cells, and I thought that a timeline would help to show how fast-paced and exciting this field of research is.

Like a lot of things I do on the Internet (including this blog), it was a random punt in the dark – a way of having a go at something fun and seeing what would happen.

Here’s what happened.

The timeline was picked up by the Guardian and Boing Boing (after I offered it to them) and by Nature Medicine and Science (of their