Purikura is a Japanese craze that has held strong for quite some time now. I’m sure some of my readers know what I’m talking about *cough*Mari*cough* But for those who are not rabid Japanese fanatics or anime otakus I’ll elaborate. Purikura refers to the making and taking of photo booth pictures and decorating them. I’m not talking slapping on a silly heart sticker and calling it done either. I’m talking about some serious creativity and art here. A popular place to place these little works of art is on cellphones. It’s a neat and fun way to show off your creativity and to show pride in the relationships (friends, family, and romantic) you have created.

Now the craze has found it’s way to the internet. Meet Phozi The anywhere photobooth. Phozi allows you to take pictures of you, your firends, or anything you want really, via your webcam and manipulate them into photobooth images that are personalized in the purikura style. It’s a great way to spice up your profile pages. If you’re a member of a social networking site like myspace, friendster ect. then I would suggest sharing this site with friends so that you can all get in on the fun.

Now not everyone has a webcam and Phozi understands this so in the interest of letting everyone have some fun they allow you to upload pictures from your computer or send them via your cell phone. That’s a big plus in my book. The only downside is that right now there seems to be some sort of glitch on their site. When I clicked on the Webcam, Upload, and Cellphone pages nothing loaded. The Phozi header at the top and a google ad loaded but that was it. I tried to access the site using both the latest versions of Firefox and Internet Explorer but nothing doing. I’ve sat here puzzling over this for a bit and the only thing I can think of is that their site might require a special plugin or software. If that is the problem perhaps they could add a little notice to their main page, which loads perfectly by the way, stating the site’s requirements? I believe that would be very useful to visitors because as it is visitors might just throw up their hands in exasperation and leave without giving the site a fair shot.