Andreea,18, from Romania, sent a photograph of the view from her window and included a brief apology, "Sorry, this picture is plain and boring. No one would like it." At home in New Jersey, US, Coreen Burke,16, clicked on the same image on the internet. She saw a village with its rooftops and walls painted in reds and yellows, a distant chimney (烟囱) giving off smoke. "Isn"t this amazingly different from my country?" She thought to herself. Burke, a teenager with a skill for computers, saw beauty in that photo. She posted it to her blog, Outside My Window, which features a daily snapshot (快照) of someone"s window view around the world. The concept is simple: We can all relate to the act of staring through a piece of glass, onto the scene on the other side. "Maybe if we understood the way people from all over the world live," she explained, "we would all get along better than we have been lately." With a click of a mouse, you can see Frederic"s window in the south of France, looking out on sailboats anchored (抛锚) in a peaceful harbor. Or Virginia"s view in Canada, a winter scene with trees laced in white. Like most high school students, Burke has traveled the world. But she says someday she hopes to collect stamps in her passport, starting with Greece and India. Her recent break was devoted to launching the site with a blogger account and recruiting (招募) contributors from deviant ART, an online art community. She posted the first window view from Switzerland, a sunset photographed by an 18-year-old. Then others came flowing in by email, up to seven a day, from as far as Kazakhstan and Indonesia. Contributors are marked on maps pinned on her bedroom wall: a blue dot indicates their country and a pink dot shows their city, if they provide it. The most responses have come from Europe-Estonia, Poland, Italy, Germany and Sweden, to name a few. She is crossing her fingers, thinking that she"ll receive a photo from Africa or Antarctica, which are unrepresented so far. While she"s become a cyber crusader (网络革新者) for appreciating the beauty outside our own windows, get this: She has no windows in her bedroom. She has a nice skylight (天窗), though. |