SepiaTown is a website that lets you view historical imagery of particular locations using Google maps.

If you have historical imagery, you can contribute to the project by uploading them to a particular location as well. Since the project is just getting started, finding historical imagery in smaller cities or towns may be difficult, but larger cities like San Francisco, London, Paris, or Moscow are filled with interesting photographs.

As the SepiaTown collection comes to encompass thousands of locations throughout the globe it will allow people to interact with history and geography in a new and exciting way; to tour the landscapes, cityscapes and events of history with a scope and breadth never before possible.

This type of “street view” historical imagery seems like something Google might want to integrate into their applications as well.

Showzey is a web app that helps you collect and organize your photographs from various places on the web in once place.

One of its interesting features is the ability to collect all the attachments in your Gmail account and either save them to your Showzey account, or transfer them directly to a photo service like Flickr or Picasa (Facebook supported too). Here’s how you would collect the photos from your Gmail:

I don’t know about you guys, but usually when I receive a photo attachment in an email that I don’t save to my computer, I never see it again. This might be an interesting way to explore all the various photos you’ve been sent over the years.

P.S. Showzey seems heavily inspired design-wise by Mint

Fotobabble is a newly launched service that allows you to add a short audio clip to photographs via either your computer or iPhone (using their free application).

Here’s the description on their website:

Fotobabble lets you create talking photos in two clicks. Simply upload a photo and then record your voice directly through your computer to create a talking photo. You can easily share it by e-mail, Facebook, Twitter or embed it into a blog or website.

It’s free and all completely web-based. No software to download, just register and get started in seconds.

Here’s an example Fotobabble found on the website that we embedded into this post:

(via PhotographyBLOG)

ImageStamper is an online tool that acts as your witness when it comes to image rights.

If you’re a photographer, it can verify when you uploaded a photograph, and if you use creative commons images, it can help document the license of the image when you used it in case the owner decides to change the license or remove the photograph in the future.

The service currently only handles photographs uploaded to Flickr, but they’re planning to add support for other photo services as well.

There also isn’t currently an automated way to have your photographs “stamped”, so you’ll have to manually enter them into the ImageStamper system.

Do you think the extra work required by this service is worth it? Would you use it to protect yourself and/or your photographs?

One of the best online photo editors is now completely free to use. Aviary has decided to offer its entire suite of online apps for free, including its popular Phoenix image editor.

The application used to cost $25 per year, and those who subscribed in the past 30 days can request refunds. While there has always been a free version of Phoenix, everyone can now save files privately on Aviary’s servers, watermark their images, and access the tutorials that previously required a subscription.

Offering the service for free should help Aviary better compete with Adobe, which offers its online version of Photoshop for free as well (up to 2GBs).

I wonder if (or when) online editors will rival traditional programs in terms of power and functionality. Any guesses?

(via Lifehacker)

If you’ve ever wondered just how much editing goes into a particular photograph, there’s now a super easy way to find out for yourself. Image Error Level Analyser is a simple web application that takes a URL to a JPEG photo and returns an image showing differing “error levels” in the image. Here’s an example they give:

After submitting the image on the left, they return the one on the right.

Error level analysis shows differing error levels throughout this image, strongly suggesting some form of digital manipulation. Areas to note are the lips and shirt, as well as the eyes. All are at significantly different error levels than their surroundings. Presumably, colours have been altered and areas brightened.

Thus, you can now investigate any JPEG you find on the Internet to see roughly how much the photograph has been edited or manipulated. The app even gives you a permalink to the resulting image comparison. Try it out, and post your permalinks in the comments to share your findings with us!

Update: Here’s an interesting article by Wired on how researchers use this technique.

SnapSort is a new web application that’s super simple but surprisingly useful. Give it two camera models and it will give you a side by side comparison of the specs, as well as pick a winner for you. In addition, it lists pros, cons, and similar cameras for each camera.

The service was created by a team of four — two programmers, a CS professor, and a “serial entrepreneur”. Here’s a screenshot of a camera comparison:

The website states that the service will eventually turn into a personal camera recommendation service. There’s no word on how SnapShot plans to generate revenue, but this type of application can do well with both advertising and affiliate sale business models (much like Flickr’s Camera Finder).

I’m pretty interested in seeing where this service goes, especially with such a large team behind it. If you’re currently in the market for a digital camera, give SnapSort a try!

(via Photojojo)

ffffl*ckr is a new Flickr web application that’s based around the idea that the people whose work you like probably also like photographs that you’d like as well. The app aims to make finding quality photography less of a chore:

Unless your idea of art is a painting of a hotrod on velvet, explore is useless. Groups aren’t much better, since they require people to self-promote. The interface for checking them is pretty useless too. Contacts are pretty cool except that it’s impossible to actually find new photographers.

The page starts with 20 photographs — these are either someone else’s favorites, or your own if you authenticate. Then you simply click a photograph to load the last 20 favorite photographs of that photographer. Once you authenticate your Flickr account, you can favorite new photographs straight from the app.

FlickrPoet is a neat little web-app built by Thomas Sturm that turns text into photographs using Flickr’s API. Though the concept is extremely simple and only somewhat novel, the results can be quite beautiful.

Feed it some poetry, song lyrics, or even random text, and watch the photographs begin to fade into existence. Here’s a screenshot made with the help of the quick brown fox (not a poem, I know).

The only change I would suggest to Sturm would be to provide permanent links to result pages so people can share their “FlickrPoems” with one another.

If you find any text that returns interesting results, please share it with us in the comments!

FlickrPoet

If you’re a tennis player in the San Francisco bay area, check out ahathereitis. This interesting new web application (though it lacks a logo and design) aims to find things for you through satellite photographs and image recognition technology.

If you’re nerdy and so inclined, you can read about how the technology behind the application works. The image recognition isn’t done real time, so you won’t be able to use the service yet if you’re outside the Bay Area (try 94704 for Berkeley, CA).

I think this is an interesting example of how the way we make, manipulate, and consume photographs will become more and more advanced as technology improves. As evidenced by the domain name and the “More coming soon” option in the drop-down menu, this app won’t be limited to finding tennis courts.

The question is, what other interesting things could it eventually help us find in satellite photographs? Any ideas?

Check it out here: ahathereitis