Announcing new features: Location suggestions and a Historypin API

Posted on by Kerri Young
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Over the years we’ve been getting many useful suggestions from our members for how we can continue to improve the ways Historypin can be used in community projects. We’re now excited to launch two of our biggest features to date: Location Suggestions and a new Historypin API.

Location suggestions 

When someone pins a photograph to Historypin, they tell us where it is – either precisely or approximately. The thing is, a lot of times they might not know exactly where that photograph was taken. For the first time, you can help to locate those photos more accurately, making it easier for others to find and explore history. If you’re pinning a lot of photos to Historypin, this can be a great tool to enlist the help of your communities of local experts to improve your collections.

An example of our new location suggestion tools on Historypin, now found on each pin that is contributed.
An example of our new location suggestion tools on Historypin, now found on each pin that is contributed.

We’ve just added the ability for anyone on Historypin to suggest a more accurate date, location or subject tag for your pins. When someone suggests something, you’ll get an email with a link to the pin and you’ll have the chance to reject that suggestion if you don’t think that it’s right. The ability to make Historypin an effective crowdsourcing platform is something that we’ve envisioned for a long time, and are very excited to share these new tools and for you to use them.

Historypin API

An example of some of the metadata you can get back using Historypin's API
An example of some of the metadata you can get back using Historypin’s API

The other thing that we’ve just released is the Historypin Application Programming Interface, or “API”. An API allows software developers to write applications that use or contribute Historypin content directly without going through the Historypin.org website. The API allows only the things that are allowed using a regular member account, and the creators of these applications are bound by the same rules for re-use that already apply to content on Historypin. We’ve updated our Terms & Conditions at http://about.historypin.org/terms/  to include this new capability. If you’re a software developer and would like to explore the API, we have some basic documentation for you at http://historyp.in/hp-api.

Please leave a comment on this post or send an email to breandan.knowlton@historypin.org to let us know how you might use Location and Date Suggestions when you’re gathering and sharing your community’s history!