'Face Match' Brings Facial Recognition to Your iPhone

That is dumb. Not even the phone is doing this. It's just sending the photo to some sever. :rolleyes: That is a let down IMO.

So when apple eventually brings this to the built-in photo app what happens to this company?

I could see this with the rumored autofocus on the the new iPhone, but what is the sense with the current models. They don't focus anyway?????

I'm really not comfortable with the idea of their servers receiving all these photos of people from everywhere. Seems like a potential invasion of privacy, especially if I'm taking your photo without telling you that the pictures are going to some off-site database for further storage and recognition.

That is dumb. Not even the phone is doing this. It's just sending the photo to some sever. :rolleyes: That is a let down IMO.

There are good reasons for having this process happen server side at the moment. Face recognition is an inherently difficult thing to do well, by having this happen server side, we can easily make changes to the recognition system and instantly get feedback on whether these changes are improving recognition success or not.

The plan is to shift everything into the iPhone client and cut the dependence on our webservers, once we're at a point where the recognition system is tuned to it's best.

Layton Duncan
Polar Bear Farm Ltd

So when apple eventually brings this to the built-in photo app what happens to this company?

We've survived so far ;-) We're the first commercial developer for the iPhone, we've exhibited at MacWorld Expo '08 before any iPhone SDK was even released, and again in '09. We were first to provide spotlight style contact and calendar searching on the iPhone in '07, first to bring video recording to the iPhone... We have a range of other products on the App Store so we're well and truly committed to this platform.

I'm really not comfortable with the idea of their servers receiving all these photos of people from everywhere. Seems like a potential invasion of privacy, especially if I'm taking your photo without telling you that the pictures are going to some off-site database for further storage and recognition.

As the developer of Face Match we're very clear that any information you upload is private to your own account. Facial features extracted from photos you upload are not used or accessible in anyway by any other user account. Photos are not kept on our servers, once facial features are extracted, the photos themselves are no longer required and are deleted from our servers.

Layton Duncan
Polar Bear Farm Ltd

We've survived so far ;-) We're the first commercial developer for the iPhone, we've exhibited at MacWorld Expo '08 before any iPhone SDK was even released, and again in '09. We were first to provide spotlight style contact and calendar searching on the iPhone in '07, first to bring video recording to the iPhone... We have a range of other products on the App Store so we're well and truly committed to this platform.

Layton Duncan
Polar Bear Farm Ltd

Respect to your work. Do you take in to account Apples ability to sweep certain ideas out from under you? Apple will always have the resources to better tie in apps to their platform. So when you make a something like a global search or video capture app that will inevitable make to the phone as a built in feature, you must know that it comes with an expiration date.

There are good reasons for having this process happen server side at the moment. Face recognition is an inherently difficult thing to do well, by having this happen server side, we can easily make changes to the recognition system and instantly get feedback on whether these changes are improving recognition success or not.

The plan is to shift everything into the iPhone client and cut the dependence on our webservers, once we're at a point where the recognition system is tuned to it's best.

Layton Duncan
Polar Bear Farm Ltd

Nice to know. Thanks for that. It's nice to hear from the developer. :)

Respect to your work. Do you take in to account Apples ability to sweep certain ideas out from under you? Apple will always have the resources to better tie in apps to their platform. So when you make a something like a global search or video capture app that will inevitable make to the phone as a built in feature, you must know that it comes with an expiration date.

New to computers, Mike?

:p

New to computers, Mike?

:p

Touche.