CNET Declares Picasa 3.5 Champion of Photo-Editing Facial Recognition Software

Interesting post from CNET's Josh Lowensohn around a 'Facial Recognition Face-Off' between Google's Picasa 3.5 (just updated last week), Apple's iPhoto (new version released in January), and Windows Live Photo Gallery (updated last June) to determine the best free consumer photo-editing face finder on the market today.

Best part of the testing is that Josh used 500 of his own mugshots in the testing procedures!

Ultimately declaring Picasa 3.5 the cream of the crop, he writes:

"It has, hands-down, the best workflow for finding faces, as well as alerting users to when it had found people in new photos. It's also the only program out of the three we tested that's cross platform, meaning you can use it on either a PC or Mac and have an identical face recognizing experience."

Check out the post in full here -- excellent commentary on the hits and misses of the trials and individual breakdown on each of the three products and their specific features.

Good Luck Hiding Your Face From Face.com

I wrote about this new site about a month ago and exciting new statistics from the alpha launch are detailed on Mashable today.

Although only a few thousand people have the application installed (myself included), Face.com has already tagged over 700,000 faces across 400 million (public) photos.

With the 15 billion pictures already on Facebook, Face.com is already fast at work going through the many fraternity party, wedding reception and family vacation pictures on the social networking site. In fact, it is tagging more than 9,000 images a minute! And if reports are correct, the tagging capabilities seem to be mostly accurate.

Exciting to see facial recognition coming into its own -- Face.com on Facebook, Flickr's use of Polar Rose, iPhoto's new Faces application...

Who knows where it will pop up next?

IHF Roundup: Facial Recognition Infiltrates Household Items, Facial Scanners Find the Bar Scene & Other Top Headlines This Week

Been a busy week of travel for me -- great chance to get caught up on the news of the world. Seems that every week, new ideas are being brought to the table in terms of where surveillance systems are being deployed and for what reasons -- Korea's most recent biometric initiative, for example. Take a look at other stories from around the world!

Facial recognition technologies are continuing to take online photo programs by storm. Announced this week, Flickr users can now import their photos to Polar Rose. This Swedish start-up identifies individual faces and names show up next to faces in the photos once the user has identified the faces based on the matching of 3D models. Yes, Google Picasa and Apple's iPhoto already do something similar to this, but Flickr's version of this technique demonstrates the depth of the technology's infiltration into popular culture and its growing momentum. Plus, these new improvements will save hours of time individually marking faces to names. I'm thrilled that Facebook might be next to jump onboard with Faces.com (still in alpha)!

Facial recognition isn't only on your computer, but also in your bathroom. Introduced this week, the SmartFaucet is capable of facial recognition to enable tempered water to avoid scalding hot temperatures -- and even enable users to access email, see weather predictions and update calendar events -- all while washing your hands! Although, I'm not quite sure wet skin and electronics mix?

And from faucet to front row at your favorite club, a Melbourne nightclub recently hit headlines with its new facial recognition deployment, the world's first nightclub installation. With Chasers nightclub already equipped with metal detectors, this new software is meant to fight violence common at the venue and keep out troublemakers. According to the article, "patrons' faces are scanned by a camera and the image and driver's license details are stored on a computer for 28 days." Also, police have access to the biometric data should an incident occur -- interesting collaboration between public and private institutions to keep the drinks flowing and glass un-shattered. I like it.

As I wrote yesterday, airports are well on their way to creating a common security system across the entire US aviation community -- and Singaporean IT is jumping onboard as well. While currently operating five individuals databases, the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) will be creating the 'Bio-Hub' to integrate all facial and fingerprint images for Singaporeans, permanent residents and foreigners. Plans are also in the works, "to introduce a non-intrusive facial capture system at checkpoints, to deter imposters from finding their way into the country." Interesting initiative. Be interested to see if any other countries lobby for similar projects.

Daily Headline Update: April 13, 2009

Starting today, I'll be posting the latest news updates a few times per week in order to make sure everything I report here is as timely as possible. Nothing too detailed, just a few highlights on anything I find fascinating -- anything from surveillance and physical security to robotics and UAV news. Let me know what you think!

DMV Announces New Secure Driver License and Identification Card System
Hoy En Delaware
April 13, 2009

• The Delaware DMV is in the process of implementing a new secure driver license and identification card system. Similar to initiatives in California and Indiana, the DMV hopes to implement a new system that will increase the security process by which the DMV issues driver's licenses.
• According to the article, the new system will employ enhanced facial recognition technology in order to protect Delaware residents from identity theft. In doing so, the system will compare the applicant’s current photograph with the division’s entire photograph database to ensure the applicant does not have a driver license/ID card in another name and to ensure the individual is not trying to commit identity theft.
  

The hidden features in Apple's latest iPhoto update
ComputerWorld
April 10, 2009
Ryan Faas

• Last week, Apple announced more "overall stability" and fixes for "minor issues in a number of areas, including Faces, Places, photo sharing, and slideshows."
• Specific areas include the ability to tell iPhoto to rescan pictures and detect missing faces, recognize manually added faces by drawing a box around a person's face and tagging them when Faces doesn't recognize them. Tagging misidentified people allows users to simply click once or twice on each photo to indicate whether Faces' guesses are correctly identified and also trains iPhoto to recognize the person going forward.
  

Cameras, sensors spark government surveillance debate
Democrat & Chronicle
April 10, 2009
Brian Sharp

• Locally, the Rochester Police Department's reliance on data-crunching computers and license-plate reading scanners triggered a backlash this week from a citizens group called Activists Against Racism Movement.
• In a statement to the media, the group labeled the targeted enforcement a "dragnet" and "absolutely racist in nature," predicting that it will predominately snare minorities for minor offenses.
• Doubt remains about whether the technology actually prevents crime, or just relocates it. People do tend to feel safer, experts say. Witnesses are more likely to cooperate with police if they think a camera also caught the action, and so property crime declines, but research has yet to document a corresponding drop in violent crime.