Want to take a trip around the world, but just can't right now? I've discovered a really fun site, on which we've already spent days playing. The site is http://www.webcamgalore.com/EN/, and it is an extraordinary site for seeing the world without leaving your computer.  Our daughter told me this morning that she had to check on Venice, Athens, and Cairo before she could eat her breakfast! To say we're addicted is putting it mildly...

I emailed the owner and originator of the site, Jan-Olaf Heise, to get more information about this fun site. Here's his reply...

JOH:  A few years ago I started watching my favorite places through webcam eyes (either no money or no time for travel, I guess you know what I'm talking about...).

I soon got tired looking up all these webcams with search engines and so I
started 'collecting' them in one place and started creating this website
(which went live in Nov. 2004).

In the first months it was quite small and barely visited, but it grew fast
and today I have slightly more than 3.000 online webcams in my directory (at
least I hope that they all are online, but my visitors are very keen on
reporting broken links and/or offline webcams) with about 30.000 visitors per
day.

Every time I work on this site I feel like being on a virtual trip around the
world. Sometimes I think: 'OMG, look at the rain in Florence, good to be at
home!' - or the other way around ;-)

Webcams I don't link to: Anything adult related - my site is family friendly
and I won't change this.
And: Indoor webcams. I once listed some but soon realized that people looking for a webcam in e.g. Hamburg want to look at Hamburg and/or the current weather in Hamburg. So it doesn't make sense to present them live images of 'Charlie's Living Room' somewhere in Hamburg, which could be located also in London, Los Angeles or Sydney.

And many people seem to think that the webcams listed in my directory are all my own and ask me to 'move the webcam a bit to the right' (in Acapulco), to 'clean the lens' (in the Netherlands) or to 'move the flowerpot aside' (on
the Canary Islands). Sometimes they even call me and are wondering that they are talking to someone in northern Germany...
I usually pass these requests to the _real_ operators and sometimes they do what my visitors request.

To sum it up: It's just fun to have this site and to work with it! :-)

WE: I am so pleased that we found this site, and can share it with our members. And Jan-Olaf, thank you SO MUCH for telling us about the origins and (sometimes funny) day-to-day details of running such a global-view site. Thank you for your hard work! We appreciate it, every day, in our house.

Again, to take this trip around the world from your computer, please visit:
http://www.webcamgalore.com/EN/