Almost exactly a year ago I posted about Historypin, developed by We Are What We Do, and on June 11th it left beta with its global launch at the Museum of New York.
The latest version of Historypin includes exciting features, the most important been its release of a mobile app, that will allow anyone to create impressive augmented reality experiences. For example, you can…
- Explore the Historypin map – the Historypin map has 1000s of images and stories pinned to it and the app allows you to browse this by date and location, using your location to find the nearest content, or exploring remotely.
- Explore the streets – holding your phone up to the street, the app uses your camera view to display nearby images. By selecting the image, it can be overlaid onto the modern view to create an historical comparison, which you can toggle or fade between.
- Read stories and recollections – all stories shared can be accessed through the app.
- Capture a modern moment of history – images taken with the app are immediately pinned to the Historypin map, with any captions and stories you add. Images can also be added from your phone’s albums.
- Digitise an old photo – take photos of old pictures as an easy alternative to scanning them, then add photo details and pin them directly to the Historypin map.
Of interest to librarians is the ability to create tours which can include embedded sound and video, just like this Beatlemania tour.
As I said in my original post, Historypin places a much needed emphases on the social role that technology can play, focusing on storytelling and the relationships that it can create. Historypin’s co-founder and executive Nick Stanhope sums it up nicely;
But, really, it’s not about the tech. It’s about those conversations – little ones, across families and streets, and big ones, involving millions of citizen historians. Through all of these conversations, we can create a place to explore history in amazing ways and help families and neighbourhoods come together around what we all share: history.
