Riya Eases Pain of Digital Image Management 63
Vitaly Friedman writes to tell us Wired is covering a new service that hopes to alleviate some of the woes of digital picture management using face-recognition technology. Riya, requires a bit of upfront training but thereafter it is able to identify and tag individuals in your pictures along with text recognition for street signs and the like. The service also plans to offer the ability to make your online photo albums public, private, or viewable by invitation.
I think they were warned (Score:5, Informative)
It's almost as if they were exactly prepared for a slashdotting! Very clever people, indeed.
Re:I think they were warned (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I think they were warned (Score:1)
Sweet! Works like a charm. Thanks!
Re:I think they were warned (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I think they were warned (Score:1)
Firefox support is coming soon [horsepigcow.com], perhaps as early as next week.
Vincent @ Riya
Re:I think they were warned (Score:1)
Re:Subscription requires IE6. (Score:1)
Which is odd, since this seems aimed right up their alley.
Re:Subscription requires IE6. (Score:1)
So why would a guy with a mac.com address ever put up with an IE 6 only restriction?
Re:Subscription requires IE6. (Score:1)
Before you all get fired-up and start yelling "standards" you gotta realize that the web doesn't quite offer up the promise of Java (write once, run anywhere).
You start with a restricted featureset, and build a product based on that. That gets you money. This money can then be used to accomplish your dream (I dunno, supporting some weird beta of a Plan 9 only browser maybe).
You put up with restrictions because it's not finished yet. It's si
Re:Subscription requires IE6. (Score:1)
Which we would that be?
Not very useful. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Not very useful. (Score:4, Funny)
Try explaining that email to her!
Re:Not very useful. (Score:1)
Joking of course.
Err... (Score:2)
Re:Not very useful. (Score:1)
Re:Facebook, anyone? (Score:3, Informative)
The two are not really alike.
Re:Facebook, anyone? (Score:1)
Re:Facebook, anyone? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'll bet in actual practice they are largely the same. I read this story and the "Begging for VC funding by grossly overstating capabilities" flag in my mind was waving at full mast. Face recognition is a technology in the infantile stage, and every demo that I've ever seen has used a database with just a couple of largely distinct faces: In reality with
Re:Facebook, anyone? (Score:2)
Re:Facebook, anyone? (Score:1)
If you had read my comment, you might have noticed that I said that "ideal" situations include highly dissimilar people. Having pictures that are largely full of family members is a nightmare situation for facial recognition - most algorithms have a tough enough time even figuring out where faces are, much less differentiating between kin. The scam sensor went off even more when they made a big deal about the fact th
So when Google buys them... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:So when Google buys them... (Score:1)
Actually, this could be really helpful! (Score:1, Funny)
This will make it so much easier to find all the right people when I have to make that awkward call from the clinic.
Good bye privacy (Score:2)
This should be fun.
Re:Good bye privacy (Score:2)
> to this service. They could use the service to identify
> everyone that enters the store and has their photo in the
> system.
Or stores start hooking up their security cameras to this service, _and_ have it trained not only with their customers images, but with 'most-wanted' images from fbi.gov and their state's Justice Dept. webservice.
I think I speak for most Slashdot users (Score:2)
Creepy (Score:2, Funny)
Castera also wonders if Riya might be useful for paternity tests.
"I submitted some photos of a little boy and others of his father -- who is my best friend -- and Riya found the resemblance," said Castera, a French industrial designer. "It's very touching."
Trusting some unknown face recognition software to do "paternity tests" is a little out there.
Isn't that how paternity was determined back in old days? ("'E's the spitting image of the Duke 'e is.")
Re:Creepy (Score:2)
It's no worse than tatooing something that you translated into Japanese with Babelfish. (Okay, he didn't, but only because I showed him what it looks like when you translate it *back*. He was going to, though.)
Doesn't seem relevant enough for Slashdot (Score:1)
Google will buy (Score:1)
Re:Google will buy (Score:1)
Alternatively, this could be produced as a separate app. that tags your photos with picasa-fiendly info, like metadata, which will then read in when you use picasa.
I don't see a piece of software getting good penetration without being a killer way of managing your photos as well- and that is a large design task in itself. Better to
Re:Google will buy (Score:1)
If it works, then sure. I highly, highly suspect that it doesn't work. I've RTFA, and I've gone through their information pages, and something is incredibly suspicious.
Let me put it another way - anyone with an ounce of lateral thinking, when first introduced to the Flickr concept, thought "Gee, wouldn't it be great if I didn't have to tag this stuff - If Flickr could do this for me by identifyin
Re:Google will buy (Score:1)
Mapping applications? (Score:2)
A lot of countries don't have access to free information, so this technology if it worked would seriously harm some of the mapping data monopolies.
Re:Mapping applications? (Score:2)
I'm stumped. How is recognizing signposts going to help with cartography?
Re:Mapping applications? (Score:2)
Re:Mapping applications? (Score:2)
Is not free (as in speech).
No geocoder.
Lacks routing data.
Film and video (Score:2)
For those who have attempted the incredibly daunting task of
Re:Film and video (Score:1)
I guess with MIMO OFDM, wireless streaming of hi-definition adult videos will soon be a reality!
In other news... (Score:1, Troll)
Anusol eases the pain of digital rectal examinations by soothing haemorrhoids. Time for my pills.
Phew (Score:1)
I'm not on Firefox! (Score:2)
Seriously, I don't understand why they *block* browsers like that. So, it renders a bit wrong? Whoop-di-doo... Before they've started supporting these browsers, if it would get popular, someone has written e.g. a Greasemonkey script to fix it. I can imagine an Internet bank doing it for it not having passed a browser security test yet and they'd have such routines, but a photo search service? What terrible things could happen from a
Re:I'm not on Firefox! (Score:2)
Interoperability of tagging metadata? (Score:2)
Anyone know offhand how they do the photo tagging? I use Picasa and do my tagging manually. I have a few hundred photos I just scanned and I don't want to manually tag them with names if there's an automatic way. Do any of these tagging programs use the same tagging format? I think Picasa uses data files in each directory and some kind of central database. I imagine each program does something proprietary so none of it carries over between programs, but I could be wrong and I haven't looked into it yet.
Per
tagging and the non free web. (Score:2)
I don't really know what pica or riya do but it would not take much. Most image formats have room in the image itself for tags. You can see and set them with editors like gimp or hexedit. The name itself, if unique, is enough for most databases and the information could easily fit into the picture. All of it seems creepy and i
Re:Interoperability of tagging metadata? (Score:2)
aging subjects (Score:1)
it'd be very interesting to see how accurately it could pick the kids up from birth ranging through to how they look now - completely different.
if it could do it accurately, i wonder if they could use it to artificially age photographs of people - ie kids missing for years and years.
Blog and the name Riya (Score:2)
It looks like they didn't even have the name Riya as of August of this year. It was Ojos [businessweek.com]. Their main guy even has a blog [typepad.com] where you can follow up on their Series B financing from the VCs. If this guy wants to make it big, their US and India teams should get the technology polished and then license it to Google for inclusion in their Google Desktop, with support for external media (e.g. DVDs full of photos).
Later, they could expand it out to search for the same faces in movies. Whoa! Hold on. You all ar
Riya Launch Party (Score:1)
don't worry (Score:2)
Don't hate me, share some love. (Score:1)
Too many photos, not enough organizational skill.
Ask and ye shall recieve, right? Please?
GPS Integration (Score:2)
Think of the possibilities of this... Timestamps combined with location would make sorting thousands or even hundreds of thousands of pictures MUCH eaiser!!! Perhaps an onboard compass included would give a bearing as to which way the camera was pointing.
Does anyone else have any information about this sort of thing?