Facebook and a brave new world

In recent months, Facebook has spent large amounts of money on the startup behind photo-sharing application Instagram, on face.com who according to the press releases, a technology that has helped to provide the best photo experience and on the "social discovery" startup Glancee responsible for the mobile application for finding like-minded people.

Wonder where facebook is going with all this; Emphasis on mobile platforms perhaps, Facial recognition technology, automating photo-tagging. Just a couple of things...

Face.com is a firm based in Tel Aviv, Israel, that has developed technology used for facial recognition on photos loaded onto websites and through mobile applications. The company has released two apps used on Facebook called Photo Finder and Photo Tagger. Facebook says the startup firm specializes in software that lets computers recognize people's faces in digital images. That there may be a worry for some.

Implementing facial recognition technology for all users can mean Facebook is able to collect a huge, photo-searchable database of its users.  So what you say? Basically, Facebook is using facial recognition technology to "suggest" tags to users who upload photos. In other words, if I upload 12 photos of my friend Munchkin, Facebook may "recognize" her face (thanks to other tagged photos of her on the website) and "suggest" that I tag her in those 12 photos. This makes the tagging process a little easier for me; after all, aren't I more likely to tag Munchkin if all I have to do is click a button that says "yes, tag away"?

Facebook has 800 million active members and each day, members upload over 200 million photos, Facebook currently hosting over 90 billion photos. Each time you "tag" a photo, its facial recognition technology learns more about what that person looks like. This technology is currently being used to help people tag photos. Is it possible, however, this will ultimately culminate in the ability to search for people using just a picture. And that will be the end of privacy, as we know it.

Not difficult for someone to snap a picture of you in a crowd, and discover everything about you on online.

Google's doodle - a great man living in dark days

As usual Google doesn’t disappoint. In the doodle celebrating the 100th birthday of Alan Turing they have created an animation reflecting the great man’s work. It’s also true unless you’ve studied university mathematics and/or computer science it’s probably something not immediately familiar.

The Google guys are no hacks by any means and have not only pulled together a brilliant doodle, it’s also at once a turning engine and a piece of cryptography challenging us to crack. For those who know of Turning will know he was an exceptionally gifted mathematician, computer scientist and code breaker, whose Turing Machine was the basis for so much in computing.

There is a photo of Turning in my office amongst much clutter – from time to time when I come across it, I’m reminded just how great his loss is to the world, and of the bigotry he endured in very dark days.

For in an act of utter disgrace, for which the British government only apologized in 2009, Turing was prosecuted for homosexuality in 1952. He was chemically castrated and died in 1954 at the age of 41 after biting into an apple laced with cyanide.

Turning helped crack the German Enigma code, a great step toward bringing a successful end to World War II. In return, he was prosecuted for gross indecency and given the choice of prison or experimental chemical castration. He chose the latter. His conviction meant he could no longer work for the British government.

Click below for the solution to the doodle.

By the way, the text “Google” is 01000111 01101111 01101111 01100111 01101100 01100101 in binary.

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2186651/Alan-Turing-Google-Doodle-Turing-Machine-Codebreaker-Logo-Honors-Father-of-Computer-Science

Icelandic Worm Monster - a misunderstanding

So we woke up today to hear about new footage claiming proof of the existence of the legendary beast Lagarfljótsormurinn, or Iceland's version of Scotland's Loch Ness Monster. Follow the link below to see this for yourself.

The notorious 'snake-like' creature is said to live in the Lagarfljót lake, which is 25 miles long and 367 feet deep - and it has been the subject of many a supposed sighting since reports of it first emerged in 1345.

Not sure if it’s just me but this monster hardly looks fluid, rather robotic, contrived and hoax’ie. What really captured my attention is not so much the new vision - rather the way a misunderstanding and/or a mistranslation through the ages can lead to people seeking [finding] a monster that looks more like the error in translation.

For instance, the phrase 'Icelandic Worm Monster' was coined in the 21st Century and comes from a mistranslation of Lagarfljótsormurinn simply as Lagarfljót worm. This is instead of the more correct Lagarfljót Würm or Wurm - a phrase which harks back to dragon folklore. It’s just possible that perhaps someone has decided to take the phrase 'worm' too literally.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OmyyHyya64