Posts tagged Recognition
Search Secures Recognition as Local Business Info Provider
Jun 28th
The idea of using search engines as a way to find local business data is fairly new; Google Maps only launched beta six years ago. But according to a recent Burke study, search sites have already become a trusted way to find local business informa…
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Disturbing Michelle Obama Image Makes A Case For Facial Recognition In Google’s New Image Search
Jun 18th
Do you remember that disturbing, Photoshopped image of First Lady Michelle Obama that made big news a couple years ago? It’s hard to find now in Google Image Search unless you know exactly what to type into the search box. Type “michelle obama” and you probably won’t ever…
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Privacy Regulators See Red Over Facebook Facial Recognition
Jun 13th
The long worked on facial recognition technology recently released by Facebook is coming under attack from European Union regulators questioning its intrusion in to users’ privacy.
Facebook gave information to the EU shortly after the investigat…
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Coming To A Bar Near You: Facial Recognition & Real-Time Data
Jun 10th
Facial recognition and detection software is a hot button issue on the web right now. Facebook has stirred a hornets nest by using facial recognition with users pictures, prompting people to tag their friends that Facebook has recognized. Google has said that is a line of creepy it will not cross.
Facial detection software is not just limited to the web though. A new startup in Chicago called SceneTap uses facial detection and people-counting cameras to scope out your local bar to tell you “what is going on.” What is the male-to-female ratio at your favorite club? Who is buying drinks? SceneTap cameras see it all and provide the data to users and bar owners. Seem a little creepy? Maybe not as much as you might think.
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The stated goal of SceneTap is to give real-time information into your local bar scene. As such, it is a location-based service that gives you information, deals and social media connections, location information and more. It is kind of like Yelp plus Foursquare plus Groupon with Facebook and Twitter integration, operating in real-time.
According to founder and CEO Cole Harper, the cameras used by SceneTap are not meant to be looked at by anyone. There is a demarcation between “facial detection” and “facial recognition” that SceneTap says it does not broach. The way it works is that there is a camera facing the door of the bar. A person comes in and the camera creates a box around the face, analyzing the eyes, nose and facial structure. It takes that data and scans it through a database to find the most similar type of match. Are you a 25-year-old female? That is what the SceneTap camera is trying to find out.
The cameras are not monitored by people and information is not stored. Bar owners do not have access to the feeds as the stream is encrypted from the backend. SceneTap does technically have access to the visual feed but Harper says that it would only be used for maintenance.
Big Data for Bar Owners for the First Time
The value proposition for bar goers and bar owners is significant. Fundamentally, SceneTap is trying to bring big data on a granular level to the restaurant industry. It analyzes what type of people are coming in, what they are buying and when they come and go. That information can be cross-referenced with promotions, advertisements and on-site staff (does Bartender A bring in more male patrons than Bartender B, for instance).
This is not the type of information that restaurants and bars have ever had access. Even with the most sophisticated point-of-sale systems, the ability to have specific gender-related data on a timeline that can be studied over a period of time is not available. Yet, add SceneTap data with the POS system and all of a sudden restaurant owners know everything about their clientele.
For bar goers, the design is meant to give real-time information to help you decide where you are going. Is Bartender A working? How many girls are there and how old are they?
SceneTap will launch in Chicago in the middle of July and have partners in select cities across the country shortly thereafter including New York, Boston, Miami, Austin, Columbus, Phoenix, St. Louis, San Diego and Las Vegas.
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How to Disable Facebook Facial Recognition
Jun 8th
Beyond the “big brother is watching you” type conspiracy theories of Facebook’s technology, there’s one recurring concern.
Facebook rarely tells users that they have changed the account privacy settings and nearly always automatically opts users…
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Facebook Unveils Facial Recognition To the World, Remains Opt-Out
Jun 8th
Facebook changed the security options of millions of international users today. The photo-tagging facial recognition program that Facebook unveiled to North American in July 2010 has arrived in most of the rest of the world today, according to security company Sophos.
Facebook does not tag people in photos automatically, but prompts users to tag friends that the facial recognition system recognizes. The service is opt-out in Facebook’s security settings as opposed to opt-in. That aspect of the facial recognition feature and Facebook’s approach to privacy altogether is what bothers privacy and security advocates like Sophos.
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“Unfortunately, once again, Facebook seems to be sharing personal information by default,” Graham Cluley wrote on the Sophos company blog, Naked Security. “Many people feel distinctly uncomfortable about a site like Facebook learning what they look like, and using that information without their permission.”
Cluley wrote an open letter to Facebook in April this year, calling for the company to go to a “privacy by default” doctrine as opposed to a privacy via opt-out policy, which Facebook currently employs for much of its information.
Cluley also does not think that most people are mentally equipped to handle the long and sometimes confusing Facebook privacy settings.
“Most Facebook users still don’t know how to set their privacy options safely, finding the whole system confusing,” Cluley wrote. “It’s even harder though to keep control when Facebook changes the settings without your knowledge.”
When Facebook unveiled facial recognition last year, it was uploading 100 million pictures to the site a day, with a good portion of those included people (who are likely also Facebook users). Companies like Viewdle and ActiveSymbols are bringing facial recognition applications to smartphones. Divvyshot and founder Sam Odio were acquired by Facebook to help institute its facial recognition program.
For its part, Google chairman and former CEO, Eric Schmidt has said that Google will never get in to the facial recognition game. That has not stopped developers from building facial recognition into Android, such as the application Recognizr.
If you are concerned about facial recognition from Facebook, you can go into your privacy settings and change them. Click “Privacy settings” –> “Customize settings” –> “Things others share” –> “Suggest photos of me to friends” –> “Edit settings” and disable.
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ArtFinder Brings Recommendations and Image Recognition to the Art World
May 29th
Recommendation engines have changed the way we think about – and the way we purchase – music, movies, and books. Do you like the Beastie Boys’ new album? Then check out Danger Mouse’s latest. Do you like Guillermo del Toro films? Then be sure to watch Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s movies.
However, there’s been no comparable recommendation engine for works of art. If you like a particular Henri Matisse painting, there hasn’t been a website for you to visit that will suggest other works by the artist or that will recommend other artists altogether.
But that’s the aim of ArtFinder, a London-based startup that wants to help make it easier for people to find art that they love. Or rather, that’s part of the aim.
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A Last.fm, Shazam, Songkick, IMDb for Artwork
ArtFinder doesn’t just offer a Last.fm-like recommendation engine, suggesting, for example, Paul Signac if you like Henri Matisse. It also offers an IMDb-like database of artwork and artists, displaying biographies and images. There are details where you can find a particular piece on display (that would be a Songkick-like feature, I suppose), and there’s also a Shazam-like image recognition capability, so that you can snap a photo and get an ID and more information about a piece of art.
It’s an ambitious undertaking, one that has to tackle the fact that a lot of galleries’ and museums’ art is not yet digitized and much of it restricted from being displayed online due to copyright and licensing restrictions. But that makes it all the more important as artwork is stuck in siloes – both offline and online – that make it inaccessible. The result isn’t simply that many people think that art is “not for them,” says co-founder Chris Thorpe. Art history books and curation efforts often assume a lot of knowledge, something that “puts people off” from discovering the art they love.
Helping Galleries, Museums, and Artists Build Apps
It isn’t just a problem for art appreciation. It’s a problem for museums and galleries, and it’s certainly a problem for artists themselves. ArtFinder wants to be able to help people discover not just a love for Matisse, for example, but for contemporary artists who want to be able to sell their artwork.
ArtFinder is also helping museums and galleries build their own mobile apps, with a WordPress-like platform meant to be easy for institutions to make their catalogs and digital assets available to visitors. This is where the image-recognition tool will be incredibly useful too – much to the chagrin, no doubt, of the docents who like to tell visitors to put their cameras away.
The first four of these apps are available now in the iTunes store: Cass Biomorphia, Cass Breaking The Mould 1 and Cass Breaking The Mould 2, and Watteau at the Wallace Collection.
Thorpe says that, until now, “we’ve never really had the right device” to bring artwork out of the galleries or out of the art imprints. But with the screen resolution offered on the iPad and on other tablets, you can now zoom into work to see the digital equivalent of the brushstrokes of a particular piece of painting.
Bringing this digital technology to the art world is an incredibly important endeavor when it comes to discovery, preservation, and commerce. Likening the process to the compilation album, Thorpe says that by building apps that showcase different “hits” from a particular collection, that the art world will hopefully be able to drive the equivalent of album sales – not just selling paintings and sculptures, but creating new art fans.
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Google Docs Gets An Android App (With Optical Character Recognition)
Apr 27th
It makes sense that the Google suite of products would have a nicer version on Android than on iPhone, right? The newly released Google Docs app for Android is certainly a testament to that.
Google added the ability to edit your Google Docs on your mobile devices last fall, a huge boon for those of us who tend to work on the go and who need to be able to access, edit, and share our work via our phones. But the mobile Web interface has still felt a little clunky, and a good reminder that really smartphones aren’t designed for word processing.
The new Google Docs app, now available for Android, makes the process a lot less painful (well, minus the fact that you’re still working on with a small screen and keyboard, of course). While composition of new documents or spreadsheets may still be challenging, the app makes it very easy for you to share items with others and open files that you receive via Gmail.
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It’s also incredibly simple to upload documents to Google Docs via your phone. This isn’t simply a matter of uploading files (although that is an option). The new app is also integrated with the Android camera so if you snap a picture of a document, the app will translate it into text via OCR, using the new “Document from Photo” option. Of course, OCR isn’t always completely accurate, but it’s still a great way to easily input information into your Google Docs account.
Note that there’s still no support for offline editing. And when you first load the app, it will take a while to sync your accounts. But once it does so, you’ll find you have access to all the files you store there. The app is available now via the Android Market.
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Google Not Planning To Release Mobile Face Recognition: Update
Mar 31st
Contrary to what I reported earlier based on a seemingly very credible CNN report, Google is not planning to release a version of its mobile app Goggles with face recognition technology. Google has had the capability for several years but so far refrained from putting it out in the world other than…
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He Said/She Said Between Google & CNN On Face Recognition Story
Mar 31st
This morning I read the CNN story that said Google was finally going to incorporate facial recognition technology into its Goggles app or another mobile application. I then wrote an opinion piece that argued Google was courting a major privacy backlash, despite seeming to have privacy controls…
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