Absolutely magnificent.
A few years ago there was an exhibition in Amsterdam where big ground-level billboards were set up in public squares, showing blown-up photographs of the same area from a century ago. There was also a mark on the ground where the photographer had stood, so standing there the billboard's image would be aligned perfectly with the reality behind it.
HistoryPin aims to do the same on a global scale. It's such a simple thing, really, giving an old photograph a set of coordinates and fudging with Street View to get the buildings to line up, but it gives those old photos a wondrous and immediately accessible context.
This is a fantastic use of information science and consumer computer services. Technology has always excelled at making unreality real; now more and more we're seeing technology used to make reality more real, too.
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