New website a virtual window to the world

9 Aug 2012, 3:30 pm   -   Source: Rhiannon Elston, SBS
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Since it launched five weeks ago, the site has had nearly half-a-million page views and has showcased more than a million images.

Since it launched five weeks ago, the site has had nearly half-a-million page views and has showcased more than a million images.

You can now see at a glance what’s happening in major cities across the world, in close to real-time, with the help of a new website developed in Australia.  

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You can now see at a glance what’s happening in major cities across the world, in close to real-time, with the help of a new website developed in Australia.

It may be 2am in London, but its residents – temporary and permanent – are still fizzing with Olympic fever. Some are taking pictures of the twisted red Orbit tower by night, while an off-duty worker snaps the athletics stadium, empty but for a lone official.  

These moments are captured and bound together by the website This is Now, which pulls in feeds from Instagram based on their location tag.

Since it launched five weeks ago, the site has had nearly half-a-million page views and has showcased more than a million images, says Per Thoresson of Lexical Gap, the company behind the site. “I think it has taken off because [it’s an idea that] has never been done before.”

“There is something fascinating about being able to see what is going on in other cities as it happens from different people’s views.”

The website could be particularly useful for track breaking news. “We’re currently working on expanding the project to cover these type of events in real-time,” says Mr Thoresson.

For now, the site covers urban centres where Instagram is popular, but future expansion could see it covering locations such as Syria, where there is a growing dependence on crowd-sourced information. “We have been getting bombarded with people asking us to open up new locations.  There will be more locations coming.”

 

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