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Historypin

Historypin

...and over there by the gas works used to be the leper colony

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Android App of the Week If you’ve ever wondered what your environment looked like in the past, or just like looking at old photographs of places you know, then Historypin is well worth a download.

Searching for pictures couldn't be more easy. The app shows them pinned to Google Maps so you just pan around to any places of interest. Tap on the pic icon by a pin and the image - or selection of images; you can pin as many as you want to a single location - open up.

HistorypinHistorypin

Search for pinned images (left) or shake your handset for random snaps (right)

A slider lets you change the time period from which photographs are shown to anywhere between 1840 - a year later than the first glass negative was produced - and the present day.

Join the Historypin community with your Google account and you can upload and geotag historical snaps for everyone to enjoy.

Historypin

Ruabon between the wars

You don’t have add any details to your uploads but clearly it’s to everyone’s benefit if you at least add the who and why to the when and where.

If you find yourself in the place a picture was taken from you can use your phone’s camera to view a semi-transparent image over the modern vista. Historical augmented reality if you will.

HistorypinHistorypin

History, more recent than you think

Pictures can also be grouped into collections though this only seems to be possible using the Historypin website at the moment.

The majority of the collections currently on show have been created by the site’s operators which brings me onto the app's one small failing: the amount of images it contains. It’s clearly early days but the site only boasts 50,000 pictures and those are spread around the globe.

HistorypinHistorypin

Think up your own collection themes (left) and upload your own snaps (right)

RH Recommended Medal

That said, this is one community site I will be making an effort to contribute to so look out for my collection of images of Hertfordshire and Denbighshire in the 1950s and 60s soon. ®

Size 1.54MB
App2SD Yes

Historypin

We make our choice of the best Android smartphone and tablet downloads every Tuesday. It you think there's an app we should be considering, please let us know.

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Historypin

Historypin

Search and contribute to a growing photo database of world history.
Price: Free RRP

App2sd - why

App development manager here. We didn't originally have app2sd because it wasn't introduced until 2.2. We had to disable use support for 2.1 and below to get this working.

Regarding the Transformer issue, we're releasing a fix for this any moment now. It's a matter of the X Y and Z axis being different on Honeycomb tablets. We can only really test on our Galaxy Tab 10.1 so any feedback on how it works in other tablets would be welcome!

Here's a little bit of info about the issue from Google

http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/09/one-screen-turn-deserves-another.html

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Um

"We didn't originally have app2sd because it wasn't introduced until 2.2. We had to disable use support for 2.1 and below to get this working."

I may be wrong, but that's not true as far as I know. You can use the 2.2 and above SDK to generate an APK targeted at 2.1 and above if you want, which would allow app2sd on 2.2+ devices but retain compatibility with 2.1 devices.

http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/manifest/uses-sdk-element.html

Thanks for the heads-up about the rotation issue fix and the link. Looks like a nightmare to implement! Will be happy to more thoroughly test the app on my OH's Transformer (I've mainly used it on my own Nexus One).

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OMG!

A review getting more than 90%, is everyone at the Reg feeling ok?

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