Social Camera: The New Face Recognition Technology

Viewdle's Social Camera Application
(photo taken from sigalonandroid.com)

Too busy to upload photographs from your camera or phone to your computer and onto Facebook?  Wish there was an easier way?  There’s now an application that will do it all for you.  Viewdle’s free Social Camera application, available to Android users, helps users automatically tag their friends in photographs taken with their cell phone cameras, saving time and energy.

Viewdle’s application, launched Wednesday, is unlike any other mobile phone application; it does all of its recognition and sharing on the mobile phone, rather than through a desktop computer.

According to an April 27th article on CBSMoneyWatch.com

Viewdle uses sophisticated, proprietary algorithms to automatically create a 'faceprint' of the captured and saved frames of the person's face you are looking at in the viewfinder. Once that face has been tagged, the faceprint is saved to the phone and the user will not have to tag that person when a new photo of them is snapped -- Viewdle tags and shares it automatically with your friends on Facebook, Flickr, MMS, or email.

In the video below, Jason Mitura of Viewdle demos the Social Camera application.  He explains that the application is run by computer vision libraries that are tracked completely on the mobile device, meaning that the phone can actually see people.  You can do so many different things with it, while building interesting applications based on who’s standing right in front of the camera.     

This is a concept very similar to Facebook's facial recognition launched back in December.  In an article published April 27th on Forbes, Laurent Gil, co-founder and CEO of Viewdle, talks about Facebook's facial recognition launch stating

Auto-tagging can only be done on a desktop or laptop, but not on a mobile device. That’s because Facebook’s visual recognition is working on the server. But because Viewdle can auto-tag straight from the mobile app, it eliminates the tedious process of tagging on the Facebook website.

The Social Camera application
automatically tags your friends
with face recognition.
(photo taken from
wirelessandmobilenews.com)

This seems to be a great application for everyone.  It seems to be fun, as well as time efficient.  But, to me, it also seems to be a little scary.  Any photograph of yourself taken from a camera phone can be put on Facebook at any time if the camera recognizes you.  This could play a role in cyber bullying, a recently discussed topic in class, as well as obscene and embarrassing locker room or restroom photos.  They may be placed online at any time without your consent.

But, if you feel you have the maturity level to use this application, it seems worth a try.  It can definitely save you a lot of time.