Belga is the official Belgian Press Agency, covering all national and international news, 24 hours a day, seven days a week and 365 days a year. The news is distributed in the form of dispatches (text) and photos. They’ve come up with a very nifty interactive idea called Piclala. What they do is offer a ‘trop cool’ site where people can share images (photos) through a massive database. Purpose is to create an archive under the title ‘what image do you have from Belgium?’. Belga opens up its image archive in cooperation with Sabam (the Belgian Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers)
Basically all you have to do is surf to the Piclala website where you can either browse the gallery (you can only pick the Dutch or French version, but the setup is pretty obvious) or participate in the competition and upload your pictures. You can win a free overnight stay in a Belgian Hotel (let’s hope it’s got some stars) for two persons, if your picture is amongst the 10 entries most voted on. So the interactivity is based on sharing, uploading images and voting. Looks like Belga is turning web 2.0 with this one, targeting consumer generated information and online participation. Yey !
For the English speaking/reading audience, the gallery is the third button from the left.
Check out the cool remix of our national anthem on the site ! Very well done! We should drop the old version and all tune in to this up-to-date remix called the Nectarine Brabançonne.
Links : [Piclala] – [Belga Press (English)]