

OldSF – Pictures of San Francisco from 1850-2000 - nikunjk
http://www.oldsf.org/#

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derrida
One might think, as I did initially, this is just an API mash-up, or some
natural language processing, but the developers geocoded many of these images
manually. It's not clear a digital solution exists. This is an important
contribution to the common historical record :-)

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danvk
You can read more about that (and download the geocodes as a JSON file!) here:
<http://www.oldsf.org/about>

The gist is that we made a big list of San Francisco streets and looked for
intersections and addresses in the descriptions. This approach can even work
for complex strings like "Mission between 16th St and 17th St". The lookup for
"16th and 17th" fails, but the other two pairs succeed. We average "Mission
and 16th" with "Mission and 17th" and get a geocode at the perfect spot.

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danvk
You can read about some of the recent development work on OldSF here:
[http://www.danvk.org/wp/2013-01-21/developing-the-oldsf-
slid...](http://www.danvk.org/wp/2013-01-21/developing-the-oldsf-slideshow/)

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moultano
The date range could use some affordance that it is clickable without mousing
over. If I didn't know the feature of restricting the date range existed, I
wouldn't have found it. (Awesome feature! :)

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ravejk
Hey, thanks for your feedback (I'm the designer). Initially we had the slider
visible, but I hid it to reduce chrome - and because it wasn't a feature that
I (casually) observed people using all that often. You're the second person to
request that it be visible again, so I'll work on either making it easier to
discover or making it fully visible on page load. Thanks again!

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wgrover
I recommend Sutro Baths:

[http://www.oldsf.org/#ll:37.780073|-122.513765&m:37.7772...](http://www.oldsf.org/#ll:37.780073|-122.513765&m:37.77724|-122.50542|14)

and building the Palace of Fine Arts:

[http://www.oldsf.org/#ll:37.802903|-122.447580&m:37.8027...](http://www.oldsf.org/#ll:37.802903|-122.447580&m:37.80272|-122.44669|16)

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derwiki
Sutro Bath pictures are awesome, I'm bummed I never got to see them.

Union Square too:
[http://www.oldsf.org/#ll:37.788056|-122.407500&m:37.7900...](http://www.oldsf.org/#ll:37.788056|-122.407500&m:37.79002|-122.40579|16)

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martinshen
This is really cool. FYI. Old photography exhibit going on now at Rayko.
[http://www.UpOut.com/sf/do/photography-exhibit-san-
francisco...](http://www.UpOut.com/sf/do/photography-exhibit-san-francisco-
then-and-now)

Full disclosure: I am a cofounder of UpOut

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rhizome
That page does not degrade. Visiting it with JS disabled displays a page with
a modal popover that cannot be closed.

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hnriot
so?

 __ _don't disable js_ __if you want to use the www. It's not worth web
developer's time catering to people like you.

if I take out my car's engine it takes me forever to get anywhere, but is that
Honda's problem?

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rhizome
What a strange thing to say. Why do you think degradability is a concept?

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EliRivers
Is this some technical meaning of "concept"? A thing is a concept if we can
conceive it in our minds. I can think about the idea of degradability, so it's
a concept.

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rhizome
You know what I mean.

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EliRivers
I don't. Seriously. If I had to guess, I'd guess it was some new name for an
old thing in whatever programming notation is hip with the kids now. Most
things around here like this turn out to be new names for old things.

~~~
rhizome
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_enhancement>

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jaxb
This has been done for Moscow and Saint-Petersburg (both in Russia) --
<http://oldmos.ru/> and <http://oldsp.ru/>

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tjpannu
Are you planning to open source this code? I can see that this would work for
many geo locations. I want do a similar web app for cities in India.

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danvk
The code for the viewer lives on github here:
<https://github.com/danvk/sfhistory/tree/master/viewer>

(start with viewer.html). If you use it to build something for India, I'd love
to hear about it!

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tjpannu
Thats awesome. Thanks, I will check it out and report back once I have
something built.

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gtani
Can people submit more pictures? I lived there from 1990 and took a lot of
shots (mostly on film bef 2000, and mostly in storage right now)

~~~
danvk
Not on OldSF. There are a number of other sites which let you pin your own
photos. historypin and sepiatown are two of them.

