December 3, 2008

Old and news

It's been a while since I've bored you with a nod to the New York Times' frequently awesome online infographics. There were just too many to choose from during the campaign, and besides, I had caribou on the brain.


But in the face of a complete and utter lack of requests from you, the SFTC reader, for more coverage of the great and wonderful ways that the NYT presents information in pretty charts, graphs and photos, I thought it was about time to pay a visit to those mad geniuses who make the old Gray Lady's web site so newsgeeky-fun.


It's not terribly new, but my latest find is this weekly series of then-and-now pictures from various parts of NYC. The writer/photographer took a bunch of photos in 1978 for a New York guidebook, and now is returning to the same spots to show what they look like from the same vantage point in 2008. These are probably more interesting if you live in New York, but either way, I love how the site displays the photos with a roll-bar that lets you reveal portions of the new picture in the same frame as the old picture - or to just see either picture on its own. Fun, right?


Maybe some day I'll have the patience - 30 years is a lot of patience, but whatever - to do something like this.


Unrelated random thought: For no apparent reason, I was wondering if anyone else had thought of this idea for a web page. And of course, someone had. A long time ago. But I like it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Interesting photo bar on the NYT photos. That's all I have to say about that.
I like the blank page. That's funny.