Have you ever wondered what your neighborhood looked like throughout history, or perhaps the historical significance of a nearby landmark? With Historypin, you can easily get historical data through user-generated images displayed in relation to your current location, all from your iPhone.
The main feature of the app allows images and relevant historical data to pop up overlaid on the iPhone’s live camera view (thanks to integrated Google Maps and Street View technology). This allows you to quickly get a snapshot of what a nearby location looked like in the past by simply holding up your device in the street. Historypin is certainly an intriguing and extremely unique approach to augmented reality, but we wanted to find out if it was just a gimmick like so many others.
Explore Locations
Upon launching the app you’re greeted with three options; Explore Location, Post a Photo and Explore the Collections. The Explore Location feature is essentially the main feature of the app and displays images overlaid on the iPhone’s live camera view. Tapping that option automatically takes you to the app’s map view where you can tap photos to jump through to relevant data. There’s a slider at the top of map view that allows you to filter the years for the displayed images.
View of image overlaid on iPhone's live camera view
The really unique part of the Explore Location feature however, is Cam View. Tap the Cam View tab from within map view to automatically switch to the iPhone’s camera. Now you can walk with the device and see images revealed on your screen as they relate to your current location. The augmented reality aspect comes in when you use the onscreen slider to fade the image, allowing it to blend in with the live camera view.
The amount of content available for your current location will obviously vary from user to user. However, the app’s other features encourage you to contribute by uploading and pinning your own historical images to the Historypin map.
Post a Photo
The Post a Photo feature isn’t just for uploading old photos (although you can do that too), but also encourages you to capture historical moments as they happen with your device’s camera.
View of the app's three photo uploading methods
After selecting the Post a Photo feature from the main screen you are again presented with three options: Capture a Modern Moment, Upload from Your Library and Digitize an Old Photo. The first two are pretty straightforward — either snap a photo or select one from your iPhone’s camera roll. The app will then let you add a caption and any relevant info, select a location on the map to pin the image, and upload it to the Historypin map to share with others.
Everything seems to work how you’d expect, although we’re not sure if this will catch on as the next photo-centric social network. Rather, Historypin aims to be more of a social-educational app that is really best suited to travelers, history buffs and users with an old photo collection they’re interested in sharing.
View of the app after selecting or snapping a photo to upload
The third option, Digitize an Old Photo, essentially allows you to snap a photo of an old, physical photograph and then pin it to the Historypin map on the location it was taken. After selecting the Digitized an Old Photo option you will be taken to iPhone’s camera view the same as before, only this time to snap a photo of your old print. Of course, you can also add the usual associated caption/data before uploading.
Explore the Collections
Tapping the Explore the Collections option from the main screen will take you to collections grouped thematically that you can tap through and view by date. These appear to be user-generated images selected from Historypin.com. Again, this probably isn’t a feature that is going to keep a large number of users coming back everyday, but certainly makes for a good browse if local history interests you.
View of the app when browsing "The Collections" section
Price
The price of the app can’t be beat: free. Developed by not-for-profit We Are What We Do (in partnership with Google), it’s clear Historypin is a passion project with potential to be more and not just your run-of-the-mill gimmicky augmented reality app.
Comparison to Other Apps
While there are no shortage of history-related educational apps available, and definitely a ton of photo sharing social networks, there aren’t many equivalents to Historypin. Perhaps the most notable app that is somewhat similar is Flickr Photo Map. The app essentially allows you to browse a map of photos that are pinned relevant to where they were taken or the location they relate to. This definitely falls short of Historypin’s functionality, to say the least.
Conclusion
Historypin definitely does everything it says on the tin. We recommend checking out the app no matter who you are, but it’s clear avid travelers and history fans will get the most enjoyment out of it. This is why we can’t help but feel it could benefit from some more social network-like features.
Integrated Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ functionality would be ideal. The ability to share images/facts you’ve discovered and photos you’ve uploaded would certainly help the app’s reusability factor and ability to grow. Either way, lack of these feature doesn’t prevent us from recommending it.