Swedish mobile software firm The Astonishing Tribe has created a mobile application called Recognizr, a facial recognition service based on a mashup of face recognition technology, computer vision, cloud computing, and augmented reality.
Point your phone at someone’s face and Recognizr’s face recognition software creates a 3-D model of the person’s face and uploads it to a server where it’s matched with an identity in the database. The application then displays the subject’s name and links to their social persona such as photo sharing sites and social networks. More at PopSci.
Doesn’t work on iPhone, and I need to dig into the privacy concerns, of which I am sure of two things: 1) this will freak people out to no end, and 2) The Tribe has most likely identified most if not all of the issues people have with this sort of application. Time to break out the Richard Nixon masks!
I use the Yelp Monocle all the time. It turns on my iPhone camera and as I spin around floating windows appear on the screen overlaid on the live video. I’ve found It’s a great way to find beer, pizza and tourist destinations.
I’ve also been using Bump, which is a cool iPhone app where you bump fists with someone and your business card, photos or other items are immediately transferred to the other person’s phone. DUBMeNow is nowhere near as cool as Bump, but it’s profitable and raised $2.8 million recently.
Augmented reality is just getting started, things are going to get Minority Report/CSI very quickly, especially with the iPad.
