Short Announcement: Retro View of Mankind’s Habitat / Pastvu.com

Once in past there was a project called Panoramio were you uploaded your photos of landscapes or places around the world and it was explorable via a map. This was a great tool to digitally visit your next destination and wander around this beautiful planet. The project/service itself is not longer available. But there is pastvu.com which offers another approach: upload historic images and place them on a map.

PastVu.com

Pastvu.com was a crowdfunding campaign back in 2013 on the Russian crowdfunding platform planeta. After collecting approx. 5000€ (323.000 RUB) and at least one more campaign (464.000 RUB). The idea itself started already in 2009 according to the “News” section of the site. The page itself shows the uploaded pictures as clustered thumbnails on a map. You can choose between different basemaps and switch between paintings and photos. You can even download the original files. At the very moment more than 500.000 images were uploaded and approx. 77.000 users are registered. Here are some impressions from the page:

It is a pity to find such a great way of mapping the world after such a long time due to translation and cultural things. Stumbling over such a great webpage makes me curious: what other platforms/solutions are out there and hidden to me cause of translation issues. I mean there are so many webpages hosted on Asian servers which might offer even better or more enjoyable maps and geo-related context… Can you share your favourite off-the-track web pages for “geo/mapping-stuff”?