Category Archives: Launch

Historypin at the Opening of Curating the Bay in San Francisco

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Visitors learning about Historypin at our California Historical Society pinning station.

We are pleased to report that this week, our joint crowdsourcing project with Stanford University, Year of the Bay, became a part of an exciting new museum exhibition in San Francisco. The exhibit, called Curating the Bay: Crowdsourcing a New Environmental History, is a collaboration with the California Historical Society (CHS) to open their collections to the public in a new and interactive way.

Museums and archives alike always aspire to having a completed history of a certain topic, and in Curating the Bay the CHS takes a leap into uncharted territory by asking visitors to fill in the blanks rather than presenting them with a finished narrative. Many of the photographs, paintings, and documents in their collections still contain historical mysteries, and the exhibition invites the public to help solve them as well as to contribute their own stories and materials.

This is where Historypin comes in.  Excitingly, we have set up a pinning station within the CHS’s exhibition, so visitors can scan and add their materials into the Year of the Bay project while they are there. And since the project is at yearofthebay.org, visitors not only from the Bay Area but from all over the world can contribute to the history of San Francisco Bay.

California Historical Society docents learning about Historypin at our pinning station

Up close at our pinning station.

A huge number of people came out in support of the exhibit during its opening this past Sunday, April 7. With music, food, drinks, and good conversation, many visitors expressed excitement at the prospect of contributing to history.

Lots of visitors arriving to the evening opening

One of my favorite parts of the exhibition is a touchscreen display of the Year of the Bay website that we created just for exhibits (pictured below).

A close-up of the custom-made interface of our Year of the Bay touchscreen.

And with great visual flair, the CHS has surrounded the touchscreen display with an analog version of the map of the Bay Area directly behind the touchscreen, complete with pins! As the exhibition continues, they will add visitor contributions to the wall along with their own “pins.” Fantastic!

The wall of San Francisco Bay pins that will be added with visitor contributions during the course of the exhibition.

Visitors exploring the wall and touchscreen during the opening.

With this exhibition and the outreach activities surrounding it, we hope to help create a richer and more diverse history of the San Francisco Bay. Since the opening, we have already received many wonderful contributions to yearofthebay.org from all over the world. If you are in the Bay Area from now until August 25th, come on down to the exhibition and try your hand at solving some historical mysteries, or follow along online as we tweet about them weekly.

One of the many mystery items in our Curating the Bay exhibit. Can you help us learn more about it?

And finally, videos and pictures are sometimes worth more than words, so here is a short video Historypin has made to explain our exciting new Year of the Bay project. Take a look!

Tony Robinson shares family photos

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My dad Leslie is the one on the left. He was a fitter for Hurricanes and Spitfires in WWII. He and his team are holding gasmasks

Tony Robinson, (who many continue to call Baldric, Blackadder’s sidekick through the centuries) has opened his family photo album as part of our project Remember How We Used To,  exploring how energy has transformed our lives.

Tony has pinned some lovely photos of his Mum in the 1930s and his Dad who repaired Spitfires and Hurricanes during World War Two. You can check out his Channel here.

But our favourite one has to be this of him popping out of a TV at the Victoria Theatre in Stoke-on-Trent!

Tony Robinson - taken at the Victoria Theatre Stoke on Trent 1967

You definitely couldn’t do that with a modern flat screen 3D HD TV! But you probably could with some of the first models of TVs, radios and other household devices which often resembled small houses.

To see how our favourite pieces of tech have evolved over the decades, take a look at our new interactive Inventions Timeline. From washing machines to the World Wide Web, explore when the devices were invented and became the common household items that we can’t live without.

All new Historypin!

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We are proud to launch a brand new Historypin!

After months of researching, planning, designing, testing and building we are ready to share with you all a major new redesign which, we hope, shows off all your content in the best possible light and gives you lots of new features to enjoy.

The all new homepage now has a Pin of the Day gallery, so the winning images of this prestigious award can be easily seen by all. You can also look back through past winners. Upload your best images to be in for a chance of featuring here.

We also have a brand new totaliser, the arrival of which is well timed as we have just reached 200,000 materials shared on Historypin. Thankyou to every one of you that has contributed to this figure.

You can now see every item added to Historypin in the new Activity Feed, which shows what you are all doing on the site, be it adding photos, videos and audio clips, favoriting other people’s contributions, adding comments, creating Tours and Collections or adding items to Projects.

Projects are also a new feature. They bring together content around certain themes. We now have several projects including Year of the bay, Remember how we used to… and My Grandparents are better than yours for you to explore, add to and comment on.

Loads of work has gone into tidying things up, beautifying and simplifying the user experience and interface, plus there has been lots of techy work finding solutions to difficult problems behind the scenes. A massive thankyou and congratulations is due to the creative and digital teams - check out their faces here.

Remember how we used to…

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Daily Herald circulation department, 11th May 1935, shared by National Media Museum

Remember how we used to work, play, watch and listen, cook and clean, keep warm and celebrate?

We are excited to announce a brand new project that looks back at how energy has changed the way we do everything things over the last century and are looking for your contributions.

Almost everything we do, from making breakfast to going to work, is very different to how our grandparents did it.

In 1952, when Queen Elizabeth II took the throne, only one in five households had a washing machine, one in ten a telephone, one in twenty a fridge. Almost nobody had central heating. Fewer than half of all households had a television and less than one in five households had a car.

Children listening to talking books, 1953, shared by Mirrorpix

Over the last 60 years children have changed the way they play, workplaces have changed the way they look, and we have shifted our tastes in the music we listen to and the clothes we wear.

So if you’ve got a photo of your parents watching retro TVs, or your granddad working in an office for example, add it in!

Girls listening to the Ruffler and Walker jukebox, 1964, shared by Mirrorpix

The project was created in partnership npower and Mirrorpix and aims to collate over 5,000 photos, videos, audio clips and stories around this theme from across the UK by Spring 2013. To help do this we’ll be running workshops and memory bank sessions with a selection of schools, care homes and retired npower employees to gather old photos and memories.

Explore this archive of amazing photos and add yours here.

Life Story Challenge Launches!

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Life Story Challenge HistorypinWho do you know who is amazing? Someone interesting, kind, worthwhile, brave, crazy, amazing, selfless, or generous and who is continuing living life to the full – an “Active Ager”?

The Life Story Challenge is now open for entries from anyone in Europe!

Simply create a Life Story about someone you know using photos and stories you’ve collected and tell the story of their life and what they are doing now.

The best story will win a cash prize and a trip to Brussels. But get in quick if you want a chance to win - the closing date is 16th September 2012.

The Life Story Challenge has been created by Historypin and the European Year for Active Ageing to celebrate the Year of Active Ageing and Intergenerational Solidarity.

Find our more and get started creating your Life Story here.

Embed Historypin on your site & do bulk uploads

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Earlier this week we wrote about the launch of Historypin Channels. As well as some neat customising functions, Channels also enable you to upload large amounts of content and embed your Channel on your own site using the Embed and Bulk Uploader Tools.

Embed Tool

With this you can embed your Historypin Channel on your own site, enabling your visitors to explore your content through the Historypin interface. When you set up your embed, you can choose which views to include from Map View, List View, Collections and Tours. Check out some of these super embeds from:

Embedding your Channel is easy:

1. Login to your Channel, click ‘Channel and Account settings’ and select ‘link with my site’.
2. Choose what you want to  embed and generate the code
3. Drop the code into your site

Bulk Uploader 

The Bulk Uploader enables you to upload hundreds of pieces of content and their meta-data at once. Some institutions who have already made use of this tool to populate their Channels with hundreds of photos are The English Heritage Archive, the Museum of Victoria and the Powerhouse Museum.

To get started, click ‘pin’ on your Channel. Follow the links to the Bulk Uploader to find out more about it and download the CSV template for your meta-data.

Historypin Channels for All!

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We are excited to announce the release of Historypin Channels which give all Historypin users new tools to personalise, manage and share their content.

If you already have a Profile, it will have been upgraded to a Channel, so you can start personalising yours now. New users can get a Channel when they join Historypin.

With your Channel you can:

  • Customise it with a colour scheme, logo, banner and more
  • See a map showing just your content
  • See all the photos, videos and audio files you’ve uploaded
  • See all the Tours and Collections you’ve made
  • See stories other people have added to your content
  • See your Historypin Repeats – modern replicas of your historical photos that other people have taken using the Historypin smartphone app

Some pinners have already jazzed up their Channels, including Sue Walker White with a lovely historical map Photos of the Past whose banner is a photo that he has pinned and San Francisco MTA Archives who have trams galore.

If you’re keen to see some super Historypin Repeats taken with the smartphone app, have a look at the Channels belonging to Mirrorpix, The English Heritage Archive and Bath in Time.

So get started personalising your Channel. If you need more inspiration, have a look at those featured on our Channels page where you can also search all the users on Historypin to find some great content.

Pinning The Queen’s History launches for Diamond Jubilee

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Do you have any photos, videos or stories of The Queen’s visits throughout her reign?

We’re launching our latest Special Collection this month, showcasing photos, videos and other memories of The Queen over the last 60 years on an online interactive gallery to celebrate Her Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee.

We’re challenging Historypinners to add their own photos, videos and stories and are setting the challenge of trying to get at least one pin for each of her 261 official overseas visits (including 96 State Visits, to 116 different countries) as well as from the celebrations for her Coronation in 1953, her Silver Jubilee in 1977 and her Golden Jubilee in 2002.

We have worked with Buckingham Palace and already have got some great stuff pinned, including items from the Royal Collection, Royal Archives and Press Association photos of Her Majesty’s visit to Paris in 1957,  Her Majesty’s Christmas broadcast from New Zealand in 1953 and the sitar presented to the Queen by the Governor of Tamil Nadu in 1997.

Pinning the Queen’s History was only launched on Sunday since then Historypinners have already added some of their own great content including this photo shared by Ron Lankshear of the boys from St Clement Danes School waiting for the Coronation drive around London, andthis photo shared by Jo Stuttard of Her Majesty in Abu Dhabi Visting the United Arab Emirates in 2010 to celebrate the special partnership between the UK and UAE.

Dickie Arbiter, Royal Commentator, said:

“Most of us capture a cherished moment on camera, be it a family occasion, a holiday, a loved one or even a very important person. For many lucky enough that very important person is The Queen. But once that picture is taken what do you do with it? Now you can post it online. Google and Historypin must be commended for inviting a global audience to share that special moment when they met The Queen and, in this Diamond Jubilee year, pinpoint where she has been and what she has done over the past six decades.”

Nick Stanhope, CEO of We Are What We Do, and Executive Director of Historypin site, said:

“We’re very excited to be able to help people bring together their photos and memories onto Historypin and create a “Royal Time Machine” that let’s us all explore The Queen’s remarkable reign.”

You can see Pinning The Queen’s History here

PS Keep an eye out for our other Special Collections including our Chevy Collection and the soon-to-be-released Life Stories Challenge.

Lawrence Lessig at Historypin Launch

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We were excited to have Lawrence Lessig join us as a keynote speaker at the Historypin launch event at the Museum of the City of New York July 11, 2011. He explored ideas of cultural heritage combining with the open architecture of the World Wide Web, as well as the challenges of legal frameworks that have not been designed with that same openness in mind. It lead to an evening of inspired conversations with institutions and individuals investigating new ways to share and explore cultural heritage on the web.

Martin Luther King III at Historypin Launch Event

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We were honored to have special guest Martin Luther King III at our July 11, 2011 launch event at the Museum of the City of New York. He shared a wonderful photo on Historypin last week and talked about the importance of the photo to him, as well as the potential for Historypin to help pass on stories and connections through the generations.

You can see this photo on the Historypin map as well.