MyGreatWorld

MyGreatWorld is an open and free ('alternative') project to map the world with photos. The worldwide photo-community aims to document every single city, every notable spot or landscape, each place of interest and even the very streets users are living in – as seen today and in past times. From any angle possible and any level of 'artistic value'.

Recommendations, comments or descriptions allow for notes on the respective photos and every (registered) user might vote for a picture and leave a message.

There is a twofold idea behind this and MyGreatWorld is combining two different approaches (to a vast mass of digital photography laying dormant on harddrives around the globe):


 * Users shall get a more neutral visual impression of a spot because of a wider range of sources (also as a counterpart to glossy magazines)


 * By means of an advanced database-technology, photos shall become an archive of time and place and a witness of change and development. The change of a place and its surrounding area, as it appears today becomes obvious by comparing the chronological advancement in housing and construction and the varying styles in design and architecture.

To make the database work, users are asked for the time (year or even better: year & month) and a category their picture fits in best (Nature, Accommodation, Industry,...). Any further description a user enters will be additionally indexed for key-words. The same goes for the photo's title. Structures and designs are straightforward and comprehensible.

Every registered user is free to create new spots (or upload to those already generated). The advanced search indicates the fact that the sites of MyGreatWorld.com offer more than a mere pool of pretty pictures: It allows for combinations of various search-parameters including the time of the capture, the motive, the spot, key-words in title or description and even the filtering for a certain photographer.

Even though MyGreatWorld.com has not officially left BETA yet, the site has already been positively acknowledged by major print media, even by NATURFOTO. The site has in April 2008 been awarded The Editors' Web-Darling of Germany’s biggest and nationwide student newspaper UNICUM. Also in 2008 MyGreatWorld.com reached Top-10-Status at killerstartups.com for the month of April.