riya. very cool, but very creepy.

bwg

http://www.riya.com/

i think that if the technology is effective, then it is a very cool implementation and idea

i also think that there is no way i would use it. waaaaay too scary....something just doesn't feel right about someone having a digital map of my face on a server somewhere.

Rumor has it that the do no evil folks may want to get involved too. Is anyone else having second thoughts about that tagline?

juliejules

I'm stunned
I looked at this site (www.riya.com) and I think it's terrifying.

I randomly searched for my first name, and got a few thousand photos. I opened one up and saw the person's full name, along with the full names of her children in the picture. Then I picked one of the children's names and searched for that and got 500 photos of that particular child. Anybody can look at photos of these kids and find out their names! and the names of their parents! and their friends! cars with license plates!

I'm sure pedifiles and other sexual predators will like this site. MySpace is bad, but this is much worse.

What's to prevent somebody from uploading pictures of people and tagging them without permission?

On the other hand, the technology is very cool. If I could get the software for use on my personal system, let's say to complement picasa2, then that would be awsome. I would never use the server version. Ever.

Jamoke

Cool applications
If done properly, it could make for a killer security system for government buildings and such. Apply the filters to live video streams... Kinda like fingerprinting database, or dna database, or retina scans...

But I don't think this should be offered for public use or even pulbic access.

It would take a really good marketing team to convince anybody they would want it running serverside...

ivar

Jamoke wrote:

If done properly, it could make for a killer security system for government buildings and such. Apply the filters to live video streams... Kinda like fingerprinting database, or dna database, or retina scans...

It's actually pretty lousy as a security system, since it can not differentiate between similar looking faces. You could combine it with biometrics or infrared pictures for it to be safe if you wanted too. (that's actually being done already) easiest example: twins.

There has been lots of companies/groups developing (face) recognition software. I took part of in one of them years ago, when i was at Uni. But as i recall we were having problems getting it accurate, because disctinct features as eyes and noses, were difficult to recognise with different light / shadows.

It's scary on one hand, but on the other hand, you can already type in a name from someone at google, and have it search for images. It just searches text with the images, rather than images itself. It seems like "the next logical step" to me really. But they need positive confirmation of a face belonging to someone, i wonder how "failsafe" that is...

StevenV

juliejules wrote:

What's to prevent somebody from uploading pictures of people and tagging them without permission?

Facebook (I think it's that one) already kindof does that - you can upload a picture and tag it with other users who you say are in that picture. My son was showing me the other nigt - he's tagged by one of his friends as being in a picture taken at a concert that he didn't attend.