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Hey, do you remember Viewdle? We saw them at Mobile World Congress showing an app that would locally store facial data of your friends so that your phone’s camera would recognize them. In that particular case, Viewdle’s app would let you pull up social networking information associated with them, like Facebook profiles, LinkedIn pages, or Twitter status updates, but in the app launching today, called SocialCamera, they’re sticking with automatically tagging friends whose picture you take. Tags are associated with online contacts when uploaded, or you can share that picture directly with the tagged friend via MMS or e-mail.
I’m a big fan of Viewdle because it’s making use of a smartphone’s multimedia capabilities, wireless connectivity, and processing power to do something relatively new in social networking. It helps that the app layout is really slick, and SocialCamera in particular is something I would easily use on a regular basis. Viewdle’s looking to turn their facial recognition software to other applications soon, so keep an eye out for more from these guys. How do y’all feel about facial recognition in mobile apps? Is it just a little too creepy, or sign of things to come? Point-and-shoot cameras already deploy it to some extent when optimizing portrait pictures, why not just let it get a bit more specific?
To give it a shot, you can find SocialCamera for free in the Android Market.
About The Author
Simon Sage
Simon Sage’s education largely surrounded writing, technology and online community, leading him to begin his blogging career at www.BlackBerryCool.com and to quickly discover a vibrant and active community surrounding BlackBerry and mobile technology. In exploring RIM’s platform, he has learned what enterprises are looking for in mobility as well as what makes the innocuous BlackBerry so appealing to them. Recently Simon’s been covering RIM’s gradual move into an already-crowded consumer market, and the impact of burgeoning challengers, such as the iPhone, as well as long-time leaders, like Nokia, on BlackBerry’s advancement. With plenty of content under his belt, Simon will be branching off a bit to see what other smartphone manufacturers are working on while still using BlackBerry as a barometer. At IntoMobile, you can count on his posts being even-handed, well-informed and thought-out.
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