Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

Opera Launches Facial Gesture Capability

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wed Apr 01, 2009 07:42 AM
from the because-they-can dept.
Software The Internet
cstrep writes "Eight years ago, Opera introduced Mouse Gestures as a way to speed up your interaction with the browser, and focus on what's important: Content. In 2005, Voice Navigation was introduced, and more recently we've worked with Nintendo to create a browser that takes full advantage of the 'Wiimote' and later, the touchscreen in the DSi. Today Opera introduces Face Gestures, a revolutionary technology designed to make interacting with Opera easier on computers with cameras. Face Gestures lets you perform frequent browsing operations with natural and easy to make face gestures. By using an internal technology dubbed 'Face Observation Opera Language,' we are able to recognize pre-determined facial expressions and match them to commands on the Opera browser."
+ -
story

Related Stories

Submission: Browsers to get Face Gestures capability by cstrep (1262904)
[+] Developers: HTML 5 As a Viable Alternative To Flash? 541 comments
superglaze writes "Jon von Tetzchner, Opera's CEO, has claimed that the open standards in HTML 5 will make it unnecessary to deliver rich media content using the proprietary Flash. '"You can do most things with web standards today," von Tetzchner said. "In some ways, you may say you don't need Flash." Von Tetzchner added that his comments were not about "killing" Flash. "I like Adobe — they're a nice company," he said. "I think Flash will be around for a very, very long time, but I think it's natural that web standards also evolve to be richer. You can then choose whether you'd like [to deliver rich media content] through web standards or whether you'd like to use Flash."'"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Opera Launches Facial Gesture Capability 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • Goatse? (Score:5, Funny)

    by TheRaven64 (641858) on Wednesday April 01 2009, @07:43AM (#27414595) Homepage Journal
    Will it automatically close the tab when you screw up your face in disgust?

    April fool?

  • For a short while, I thought maybe Slashdot would forego the usual orgy of April Fool's jokes this year.
  • "How will it end?"

    "In fire"

  • FOOL (Score:5, Informative)

    by BaatZ (850474) on Wednesday April 01 2009, @07:47AM (#27414659)
    Face Observation Opera Language == FOOL. quite obvious but a pitty, i'd like this feature !

    • You only think I guessed wrong! That's what's so funny! I switched glasses when your back was turned! Ha ha! You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well-known is this: never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha...*falls over dead*

    • Face Observation Opera Language == FOOL. quite obvious but a pitty, i'd like this feature !

      I wouldn't have a problem with these April Fool's jokes if they were actually funny/unpredictable. But they keep dragging out the same tired old shit... it's like a Nintendo conference.

    • Yeah, it was a rather obvious one. Also, you'd be a bit screwed if you had an uncontrollable facial twitch! /me wonders how many other people post for the sake of racking up the "April Fool" achievement

      • well lets see of the readers of slashdot subtract the ones now dealing with the conficker worm or the ones that just decided to stay off the net on this day and the ones that have an account but don't post

        oh several thousands

        face not a good input device keys hurt to much

    • Most of the time, I can't even get mouse gestures to work reliably. Can't even imagine trying to get this to work.

    • It *could* actually work. We're already seeing natural gestures in touch. If you rig up a camera to watch the facial movements of a user, you could specify various movements to do things. Blink - close tab. Blink twice - close window. Wink with left eye - new tab kinda thing.

  • When you start staring longingly at the screen while beginning to sweat a little, it knows what to do.

  • As if I didn't already look like a complete moron at first sight. Now I will look like a *grimacing* complete moron.

  • So... that whole thing about "don't make faces dear, someday it'll freeze like that" makes me a bit worried. What happens when I pull a muscle and all the sudden Opera takes it as my "O" face and keeps popping up porn sites?

    PS. Anyone else notice the Achievements section in their profile now? ^_^

  • Not Opera original (Score:5, Funny)

    by halber_mensch (851834) on Wednesday April 01 2009, @08:13AM (#27414899)
    This technology was originally patented by Atypical Peripheral Recognition Intelligence Laboratories as "Facial Orientation Observation Language".

    • Atypical Peripherals? I thought most everyone had a face... ;-)

      Many of us frequently plant it in our desks with excessive force, particularly on the first of April.

    • I don't have Perl installed on this Windows machine. What does your signature do? (Assuming "eval" is replaced with "print")

  • ...Firefox announced that the latest upgrade has multi-threading capability, the awesome bar has been removed, all the memory leaks fixed, and that all new features will be bundled as add-ons rather than built-in, so that users have a choice whether or not to keep them installed.

    What? It's just as likely as face recognition! I believe it is also codenamed: FirePony.

  • OMG. LOL.

    Hey, this is great, my machine just typed that by observing my facial gestures! I didn't realise Safari already had this built in

    Oh, but aren't 'facial gestures' normally called 'expressions'? ;P

    Imagine the fun you could have if this was real - having a default action that recognised some of the more well known 'first goatse' expressions. It could learn them from the flickr group

  • What about The Onion? Are they supposed to post real news all day or something?

    Won't somebody think of The Onion!

  • If it were real, it would be pretty stupid. Why would anybody want to keep their face in a given position to use their browser? Not to mention outside distractions causing reactions that would throw off the browser. All in all, Google's CADIE [google.com] is the cooler joke.
  • I could actually see this.
  • is really slow, this tech needs to evolve a bit snort post!

  • Oh boy, here we go...

  • So, what does the browser do when the user recoils in horror after clicking a goatse link? Zoom? Laugh? Redirect to tubgirl?

  • I hope this has a low-pass filter, otherwise people with a facial tic might wind up somewhere unexpected.

    • ...may as well not read slashdot today. Am I the only one who truly dislikes April 1st and all the crap that people do "to celebrate"?

      Translation: Get off my lawn.

    • No, loads of other people also get inexplicably wound up with joke news being posted for one day out of every 365.24. Personally I can't say I'd miss April fools if it went, there is such a bad shit vs funny ratio in 'fools' but fortunately a sense of perspective stops me really giving a damn, YMMV.
    • You think it's any more reliable any other day? Barely...

    • I personally look forward to Slashdot's April Fools jokes each year. There's often some quite funny self-deprecating humor they report on...

    • ...may as well not read slashdot today

      So... don't? It's not like one day of not-slacking will hurt *that* much :P

      • Re:Oh yeah, it's April 1st... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by hal2814 (725639) on Wednesday April 01 2009, @08:19AM (#27414953)
        My personal rule for practical jokes is that they are fun provided nobody involved would mind being the victim. Based on what I'm reading, you're too thin skinned to enjoy them so I'd neither play one on you nor expect one from you. But there are plenty of people on this earth who don't associate a small joke at someone else's expense as abject humiliation or a sign that the victim is a moron. I've been on both ends of practical jokes. To me, being the occasional victim is worth the enjoyment others get from them. And pulling one off is worth the effort given the victim is a good sport about it.

        • +5 In The Mood! (Score:4, Funny)

          by Mateo_LeFou (859634) on Wednesday April 01 2009, @08:52AM (#27415455) Homepage

          I know that when I come to /. on April 1, what I'm looking for is an even-handed, discerning discussion of the ethics of comedy, with due attention to qualifications and ramifications.

          • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

            by ebh (116526)

            OK, discuss the ethical ramifications of this one:

            I am up for a promotion at work. My cheap-bastard boss's boss is holding it up because he thinks he'll get a gold star for saving the money, and probably won't let it go through until he has my resignation letter in hand. I don't want it to come to that.

            I'm a sysadmin and I rarely wear anything but blue jeans to work. My April Fool's joke is that I told them I was taking this morning off to "take care of some personal business". I'm going to show up at l

    • Did anyone else read this as "Oprah Launches Facial Gesture Capability"?

      Please no, I beg of you. I don't want to see Oprah's "happiness" face. *shrugs*

    • I know it's a joke too, but someone will actually implement this because it just gave them the idea...

      I wouldn't be surprised if someone had already started working on it with a webcamera.

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.