PIXOS: around the world in 80 pics (or more)

Exactly one year ago, on New Year's Day 2004, Pixos was launched on the internet. Now, a year later it has already become a photo album of several hundred pictures snapped by a pool of about 100 volunteer photographers located all over the world. We can see the fruits of their work as captured by their digital cameras in a neatly designed and easily navigated website.



Pixos is the brainchild of Gregor Hochmuth, a student of computer science and a talented photographer himself. He just published his own wishes+visions for 2005 on his personal web site and I encourge you to take a peek. The idea for Pixos is straightforward, the execution flawless, and the results speak for themselves. Every other week or so Gregor issues a call for new pictures in form of a "theme" such as "waking up in...", "shopping in...", "traffic in...". If you sign up (it's free and painless) you are welcome to submit up to six digital photographs yourself. Of course the entire process is accomplished online and interactively. Pixos provides the conceptual framework, the picture viewer, and the gallery archives. The members do the shooting of the pictures, and then their individual efforts magically assemble into a big international picture book.

Gregor himself acts as the facilitator and as a gentle moderator. You can tell that there is an editing intelligence behind it all as the pictures coming in with a certain amount of serendipity are organized in chapters. The level of quality throughout is pretty high with lots of new views of the world as we know it. Give Pixos a spin and travel the world from your computer. Becoming an explorer has never been easier.