There has been some interesting projects being developed in this space lately. Probably the more accessible ones at the moment are those that use a Google Maps/Flickr Mashup such as these ones
Paul Hogans's proof of concept mashup for the Powerhouse
http://www.paulhagon.com/blog/2008/08/19/powerhouse-street-view-mashup/
Or this one Sepiatown that Seb Chan mentioned in his recent TEDx Sydney Talk
http://www.sepiatown.com/index
While these are great sites I wanted to find some examples where there was more of a User Generated Content approach so people could add their own stories, photos and comments easily.
One project I really loved is this one which is Facebook based but seems to have created some really greal dialogue around the places is by Dan Blank who posted 175 photos and his memories on Facebook after a trip to his hometown in Howell, New Jersey. He had 700 comments then pulled the dialogue back into his blog
http://danblank.com/blog/2010/01/26/how-i-used-facebook-to-unearth-a-towns-history/
And of course the wonderful work of Priscilla Davies from our very own ABC on Black Saturday which mapped stories from the huge bushfires in Victoria in 2009
http://www.abc.net.au/innovation/blacksaturday/default.htm#/timeline/map/chapter/1
3 comments:
Hi,
Thanks for the shoutout; it may have not been clear from Seb's presentation, but SepiaTown is actually designed to be a completely user-generated site--we've started it off with our own uploads, of course, but it's our hope that the public will make it a truly complete compendium of their own local history, which is much more exciting than a site where you have to just consume what's presented.
Jon Protas
SepiaTown
Hi Jon, thanks for pointing that out. It would be great if there was one location you could upload files to to get them pulled into this sort of project. I work for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation the ABC the public broadcaster in Aust and we are in the process of joining Flickr Commons. Have you had much to do with them? I imagine this would be a great source for your project as all the images are geotagged, ours are anyway.
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