faces

The folks at iSpazio have posted a spy photo taken recently showing what they claim is the next-generation iPhone--with a forward-facing camera. Rumors about a future iPhone having this ability along with a video version of iChat have been circulating in recent months.

The rumors are more than likely the direct result of an Apple patent that was granted this past spring, which is one that could make this rumor a reality--but that does not mean much. Just like any patent there are features that may never see the light of day.

If the spy photo is the new iPhone, … Read more

So many of us use Yahoo 360 these days that it's become almost a mainstay of our daily culture--wait what? You don't use it? You've never even heard of it? OK, I'll be honest, I'd never heard of it either until we recorded this week's podcast. Apparently, it's huge in Vietnam though. Dong talks about how it's shutting down and I wonder why I should care.

If there's anything I'm good at, it's waxing nostalgia about my childhood. And by "good" I mean I can talk about … Read more

Do I detect the faintest hint of a smile in your driver's license photo? The smile that says, "Gee, I've been here for three days, it's amazing what popping a little E can do to help you through."

Well, perhaps you might rejoice that you don't live in Arkansas, Indiana, Virginia, or Nevada.

Those states--and perhaps more to come--have decided to enact a no-smiling policy on driver's license photos.

Their intentions are noble. You see, these states have invested in very fine software that compares photos on licenses to other photos already taken. … Read more

Without any big fuss, a face-recognition feature has been added to Flickr.

The new feature was launched recently by Swedish start-up Polar Rose. It lets users import all their photos from a Flickr account to an account on Polar Rose, where the images are then automatically assembled into groups dedicated to various individuals.

As with similar features in Google Picasa and Apple iPhoto, names eventually show up next to faces in the photos once the user has identified the faces. The labels then get sent back to the Flickr account. Polar Rose, founded by Swedish mathematician Jan Erik Solem in 2004, intends to license its technology to numerous Web sites.

"No other company wants to offer its face-recognition technology to all other sites," said Solem, now CTO of the company.

Polar Rose is also ready to import photos from Facebook accounts, but there's a snag.

"Facebook has a rule that downloaded data cannot be stored more than 24 hours," Solem said.

And since thumbnails are stored in the user's Polar Rose account, the start-up won't immediately be applying the feature to Facebook photos.

Already in place, though, is the authentication function Facebook Connect, which lets users log in with their credentials from Facebook. A friends list can also be imported from Facebook and can be used when identifying faces in photos from Flickr.

Solem won't say whether there's a commercial deal afoot with Flickr. "Of course we talk with them," he said.

Flickr, for its part, has kept a low profile on the subject.

"Flickr has the second most popular API on the Web," said a representative for Yahoo, which owns Flickr. "Polar Rose is one of the many third-party developers using the Flickr API to innovate and present public Flickr data in new and unique ways." … Read more

Speed has been the heat behind the desktop browser battle, and not much else. On Wednesday, Opera Software decided to throw an innovative curve ball by introducing a feature into the version 10 alpha of the Opera browser that lets you surf the Web by flaring your nostrils. They call it Opera Face Gestures.

If you've got a Webcam and a working F8 key, you'll be able to open new browser tabs, navigate around, and even compose an e-mail using one of 45 different facial gestures, like puffing out your cheeks to zoom out, or craning your neck … Read more

Start-up Face.com announced a Facebook application on Tuesday called Photo Finder that can identify your contacts' faces--and your own--on the social-networking site.

The software analyzes photos among your contacts, suggesting tags for faces it recognizes and monitoring new uploads for more. The software presents an array of your contacts' photos, letting you accept or reject suggested names for the people the application has identified.

In my not-so-extensive testing, I found that the face recognition technology really does make it easier to discover photos of people you know. It surfaced dozens of untagged pictures among my network of contacts, all … Read more

Erica Boeke is on the show today to talk about her new book "GameFace: The Kick-Ass Guide for Women Who Seriously Love Pro Sports." On the show, we talk about women and their fascination with watching hockey players kick each others' ass. And Justin reveals that he has never played baseball, basketball, football, or hell, even played catch in his life.

We don't talk too much technology today, but we promise: we have a good time with sports and our general ability to turn any seemingly benign topic into a sexual innuendo. After Justin talks about men playing hockey, you'll never think about it in an unerotic way again.

Briefly on the show, we mention the war going on between Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," and Jim Cramer, host of CNBC's "Mad Money." Jon Stewart pretty much destroys Jim Cramer and the entire financial news media. We've never almost seen a grown man crying on cable television.

As usual, keep the voice mails coming: 1-866-404-CNET (2638). We still haven't found the right motto yet, but boy do we have a good time sorting through them. Or if you just want to leave a message about how Erica Boeke looks like Helen Hunt, that's fine too. Everyone have a great weekend, and you'll hear us next week when Jeff asks the Sleep Doctor Michael Breus how to stop farting in his sleep.

Despite detailed demonstrations that the security of its Veriface face recognition technology can be manipulated to gain unlawful access, Lenovo is keeping current notebook models equipped with it.

In an e-mail interview with ZDNet Asia, a Singapore-based Lenovo representative said the company has "no plans to pull affected models." However, the PC maker does plan to continue to upgrade the face recognition technology.

The technology's vulnerability was demonstrated in December by the Bach Khoa Internetwork Security (BKIS) center in Hanoi, Vietnam.

At the Black Hat security conference last month, researchers Nguyen Minh Duc and Bui Quang Minh … Read more

Face recognition technology isn't perfect yet.

That's certainly clear when using the "Faces" feature that is built into the recently released iPhoto '09.

Sure, the product does reasonably well at finding your friends and family in your photo collection. Tag a few photos by name and iPhoto comes up with other suggestions, often recognizing photos that are taken years apart and with vastly different looks. Heck, iPhoto even spotted me when I was a different gender.

The science behind face recognition is complex and still evolving. In general, face recognition software looks for predictable patterns--characteristics and proportions that stay constant from one photograph to another, things like the distance between the eyes or from the eyes to the mouth.

Even with things where the science is today, having help--any help--with the tedious task of tagging photos is welcome. And iPhoto can certainly find plenty of matches in your library, even if it won't spot them all.

But the real genius part is how Apple has made the process fun, even when the results aren't perfect.

Early speech recognition was also hit or miss, but it was painful to have to scream at a computer while it constantly misunderstood what you were trying to say. With face recognition, at least as built into iPhoto, the goofs are what make it fun.

The software frequently suggested that my contemporary friends and family were actually my 80-something cousin, my 90-something great aunt, or both. iPhoto also confused Bill Gates with our friend's 3-year-old. And among the suggestions for former CNET colleague Joris Evers was a shot of Wayne Gretzky that I had taken at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. … Read more