Flickr photo booth
You're dressed to the nines and having the time of your life with friends at some hip bar. Chances are everyone in the group has a digital camera or camera phone to capture the moment. But who knows when the photos will get distributed to everyone or posted online.
A new bar in downtown San Francisco has the 21st century version of the photo booth. It's an old-fashioned booth where people can get as candid and silly as they want (particularly after a few drinks), but it also ensures that the results can be seen by all immediately.
The photo booth at Shine, at 1337 Mission St., takes four photos and automatically posts them in the traditional vertical strip mode to the popular Flickr photo sharing Web site, which is owned by Yahoo.
"We were looking for something interactive at 5 a.m. on a construction night," Brian Walsh, a Shine investor and the creator of the photo booth, told CNET News.com. "We asked, 'What can go in this corner?' I said, 'What about a photo booth?'"
On a recent Wednesday, the booth, complete with red velvet curtain, was nearly as popular as the dance floor, with people cramming in to the confined space and waiting outside to use it.
Soon, the photo booth subjects won't have to wait for an Internet connection to see the results. Within a week the bar plans to project photos from each night on a white screen on one of the bar's walls in a random rotation, said Walsh, who founded the Castfire podcast advertising network.
Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service, and the Associated Press. E-mail Elinor.
