New Shoebox from Webshots

Nick and Narendra, the founders of Webshots who are now part of the CNET family, have just leaked out the Beta of a new project they have been working on called Shoebox. It is hard to describe, sort of a personal photo clipping service that lets you share your clip collections with the shoebox community. Rather than just limiting you to the massive Webshots database, you can clip a photo and add it to your shoebox from just about anywhere on the web (It didn't work with some sites I tried like Selko Photo using Flash for their albuming).

Narendra is keeping a companion blog to encourage a dialog with early users. Give it a try. Those of us who like photos usually view many different sources, Shoebox lets you monitor multiple RSS feeds (like "where in the world is Esther today?") but more importantly lets you see what others are clipping. This is really the essence of sites like Flickr.

To me the photo "communities" dynamic can be described as services that you get hooked on - logging on every day to see what random people who you have never met in person from anywhere in the world are capturing with their cameras. You get hooked on the community when you first add a few of them to your "friends" or contacts lists. Then you may dialog with them via comments or in forums. Then you start adding your own pictures and people add you as friends and add comments.

It is hard to explain but very powerful. Having these virtual lenses from all over the world. Makes me think of the Grateful Dead song "Eyes of the World" These streams of digital photos coming from photographers everywhere are like the "lenses of the world" - Shoebox is a great new way for you to grab a view through those lenses!