Ten by Ten is a site that tries to sum up the day in pictures. It works by scanning global news sources and producing pictures of whatever is consistently hitting the news that day. I particularly like the Mac OS X-style vertical bar, which gives you the chance to scrol lthrough keywords.

The idea of trying to summise something - anything - in pictures reminds me of a competition that ran at the Photographer's gallery in 2001. It was called YR1, and it which invited people to submit pictures that they felt summed up a partiular aspect of life in England at the start of the millennium. Categories included things like 'home' and 'work'. The exhibition was fun - the gallery showed hundreds of pictures spanning the different categories and it was interesting to see what people from different regions and demographic groups had chosen. But then they blew it. They shortlisted all the pictures down to just a few and then chose the one photograph that they best thought epitomised England. It was, if I recall correctly, a guy sitting on a beach. A sandcastle may have been involved.

You just can't do that. In a postmodern society where there are as many different voices and perspectives as there are people, it's a fruitless exercise and it oversimplifies. I really enjoyed the exhibition until that point, but I think they pushed it too far. Anyway, I like Ten By Ten, and the idea that 30 pictures can be worth a hundred thousand words.