recognition

Facebook has acquired Face.com, confirming rumors that the companies were in talks.

Face.com announced the acquisition on its blog today, saying that its work with Facebook will offer it "more opportunities" to build products.

The Tel Aviv, Israel-based startup offers application programming interfaces (API) for third-party developers to incorporate Face.com's facial-recognition software into their applications. The company has released two Facebook applications: Photo Finder, which lets people find untagged pictures of themselves and their Facebook friends, and Photo Tagger, which lets people automatically bulk-tag photos on Facebook. Face.com launched its open API in … Read more

Intel reportedly wants to kick off a new interactive TV service this year, though media companies aren't yet sold on the idea, Reuters reports.

The new service would use a set-top box with embedded Intel technology and tap into facial recognition to figure out who's watching, according to the report, which cited "sources who have been negotiating with Intel." Reuters said such a feature could allow advertisers to better direct their ads to specific genders and age groups.

But Intel wants to unbundle and license specific networks and TV shows at a discount to what cable … Read more

Facebook is in negotiations to acquire facial-recognition technology company Face.com, according to a report from Israeli business publication Calcalist (Google Translate).

The social-networking giant is said to be offering $80 million to $100 million, according to a report on Newsgeek.

CNET has contacted Facebook for comment and will update this report when we learn more.

The technology made a splash in 2009 when it released Photo Tagger, a free third-party application for Facebook that uses facial recognition technology to automatically tag photos of people, as well as a recognition-based alert service for Facebook. In 2010, Face.com released an open API … Read more

AT&T has been involved in the speech recognition space for years. And now, the company wants to share with others what it's achieved.

The company announced today that it will make several AT&T Watson Speech application programming interfaces (APIs) available to developers in June. With the help of those APIs, developers will be able to create new apps and services that rely upon AT&T's Watson speech recognition technology.

The first set of APIs that AT&T plans to release will focus on Web search, question-and-answer, SMS, and dictation, among other areas, … Read more

Should you trust that official-sounding guy on the phone trying to talk you into transferring cash from your account to his? Well, we're going to go out on a limb here and say no, but in case that's not so obvious, new voice analysis technology out of Japan promises to help spot the scammers for you.

Nagoya University and Fujitsu have created software they say can automatically identify situations in which one party might "overtrust" the other. It does so by detecting changes in voice pitch and volume level that can occur under psychological duress.

By combining this technology with keywords such as "indebtedness" or "compensation" that are characteristic to a specific type of remittance-soliciting phone-phishing scam called furikomesagi, the researchers have developed a setup now being tested in collaboration with the National Police Agency of Japan and the Bank of Nagoya. … Read more

Drivers in the United Kingdom will have another thing to worry about every time they pull up to the pump. In addition to wondering if they'll have enough money in the bank to pay for the exorbitant price of fuel, they may need to check if they paid their car insurance premium on time.

In an effort to crack down on auto insurance scofflaws, the British government wants to team up with gas stations to identify drivers who haven't paid their premiums, and prevent them from filling up. The proposed plan will use automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) … Read more

Microsoft is enhancing some of the accessibility features in Windows 8 to make the new OS easier for people with disabilities.

Certain "assistive technologies" have long been a part of Windows. The built-in Narrator can read text aloud to people who are blind. The Magnifier can zoom in to display content for people who have trouble seeing. Speech recognition allows people who are unable to type to navigate via voice.

But as described in the latest Building Windows 8 blog by Jennifer Norberg, a senior program manager on Microsoft's Human Interaction Platform team, Windows 8 is taking those features a few steps further.… Read more

Speak now, or forever hold your chance to win this week's Crave giveaway. The prize: Nuance's Dragon Dictate 2.5 for Mac. The speech recognition software boasts some enhancements over earlier versions, including full support for Microsoft Word 2011 and new Facebook- and Twitter-sharing capabilities.

Dragon Dictate 2.5 also takes advantage of the recently introduced Dragon Remote Mic App, a free application that lets you use an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad as a wireless microphone for Dragon via Wi-Fi.

Normally, Dragon Dictate 2.5 would cost you $179.99, but you have the chance to get it for nada, nothing, zip, zilch. So how do you go about snagging this week's freebie? There are a few rules, so please take a moment to stop talking and read them carefully. … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Looks like Siri was just the beginning.

Okay, even Siri wasn't the beginning. The ability to do voice-command isn't particularly new, but the marquee feature for Apple's iPhone 4S has gotten the masses to recognize and appreciate its benefits. For the first time, voice-command was a feature people talked about and coveted.

At CES, there were better implementations and voice-commands popping up on different devices. Big-name companies got into the mix. Dieter Zetsche, head of Mercedes Benz, said voice would play a major role in its cars, calling them a driver's "digital companion." … Read more