Riya: Limitless Potential
Google, you slimy bastard. How could you spot a technology that is practically has an indefinite potential to grow and applicable to almost everything. Do you have a special web-monitor group that monitors every heart beat of internet (and its technology) that is dedicated to spot-on place a new emerging technology far before anyone realises it and snap it just in time before other big players knock on their doors?
I’m talking about Google’s soon-to-be-announced-I-think acquisition on Riya, a service pretty much like Flickr but with the ability to recognize someone’s face and tags it. I’m not pretty sure on what face recognition technology are they talking about, their site is currently unavailable because they are preparing to move to alpha release just now (so it’s pretty much hard to gather the fact).
So from previous information I gathered (before the site was down), I asume that Riya has the technology to identify a person in a picture, once there’s another picture identified as that person. Confused? Let me make this simple. You upload your photo to Riya and tag the photo with your name. Then I upload another photo which pictures the two of us on our fishing trip. the software automatically recognized that you are in the picture and thus when people search for you on the site, it automatically includes the photo that I uploaded (which has you in it). Think of the possibilities!
People can now search photos about anyone even if the photos isn’t tagged yet (because the system automatically recognized it). Not only that, if implemented to other business, the impact will be huge.
Imagine this. You wanted to go to a U2 concert and you buy your ticket online. You just put your name in, pay the amount due and it’s done. No need to print the ticket, no need to pick up the ticket, no need for tickets at all! In exchange, you can simply go to the concert and have your face “recognized” in the entrance gate and you’re free to enter. All this because the system already recognized your face before and tagged it with your name.
In an extreme example, this technology can be effectively use by security forces to track down terrorist by simply apply it to airport’s (or anywhere else) surveillance camera. Once the bad guy shows up, it can instantly alarms the police to start a hunt down.
Here are some possible implementation of Riya’s face recognition technology:
- Ticketless concert or other public gig
- Automatic office/school absent system
- Face-recognition door lock system
- Car-lock system
- Anything-that-previously-has-lock system
- Banking made easy - no need for your saving account books!
- Can someone add more?
Think of all the possibilities! Google you slimy bastard…
