As we already noted, GIS shop Azavea has received grant work to develop an augmented reality smartphone phototype with historical Philly photos. Now we get greater details:

…we’re currently hard at work investigating mobile augmented reality and its use with historical photographs.  The Philadelphia Department of Records recently won an NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant to research augmented reality (AR) technology and create a smartphone prototype that will enable users, via their smartphones, to view historic photographs from PhillyHistory.org as overlays on the current landscape.  If the research proved successful, users would be able to point their smartphones, using the camera view, at a building or other location and see historic images of that same location.  The photos would be accompanied by descriptive information from PhillyHistory.org with additional explanatory text provided by local historians.  This combination of technology and history could be a powerful tool for showing the lengthy and interesting history of Philadelphia. But how to make it happen?


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