photo booth

In the days of cell phones and video chat, there's not much of a reason to keep a rotary telephone around other than its vintage good looks. A new project called the Rotobooth is repurposing those antique devices of yore in a way that is so 2012: a text message-sending photo booth.

Rotobooth users dial their mobile numbers the old-school way with long winds around the rotary phone located below the camera lens. Creators of Rotobooth hacked the phone with an Arduino microcontroller, so that once a photo is taken, it's sent to Flickr, and the user then receives a text message link to that photo on whatever number was dialed on the rotary phone.

This retro take on a modern digital photo booth was actually part of a hacking session at Twilio, a cloud-based texting company, and was used to send text message photo links to those smiling for the Rotobooth camera. Go, hackers!

Photo: Flickr User mauxfaux

I have a big collection of photo booth photo strips in a shoebox from when I was younger. There's just something about the photo booth experience that really captures a moment! If you want to get that same retro flavor but don't have access to a photo booth, then check out Shutterfly's new little sister, Wink. Wink lets you print photo booth style strips in a few simple steps, and all it costs is $2.50 per strip (including shipping and tax). Just upload four photos to Wink (or use their iPhone App) from Flickr, Facebook, or your hard drive, put in your shipping and payment info, and get a sweet and glossy photo strip in just a few days.

Additionally, if you wanted to send a few to your friends as a gift, but don't have their address, you can input their email instead and Wink will send them a preview of the photo strip while getting a confirmation of their address. No spamming, they promise.