217 Lemurs

Another map geek site… What Was There take a Google Map and lets you add historical photographs of specific locations. The interface is quite slick and even better the fact that in the default mode which shows you your current location I found different photographs for the same location.

It is fully integrated with social media but the crowd-source nature of the project means that it depends on a relatively even level of support nationally (and internationally). That could be a bigger challenge unless they get their social media working in both directions.

There are a few sites that do this but the interface and ‘spots’ on this one make it incredibly slick and seamless. The fact that one of the ‘strange’ things captured is Coronation Street at the Granada Studios which they indicate is Salford (one small victory for the Save Salford campaign). There is even the obligatory set of UFO spottings. Which I suppose is similar to the supposed ‘God’ spotting in Germany through Streetview…

or a claimed birth captured live by the Streetview vans…

Some of these pop up regularly but there are also a few in this listing that are new (to me at least). After 3 days in Oxford the cat design stood out but my favourite is really the fold out map (but hey, map geek).