There were a few things I was going to blog about today. The first was about Blue Peter presenter Helen Skelton. For those outside the UK Blue Peter is a long running children’s television show here in the UK. The show talks about topical vents, tells you how to make things and sometimes throws the presenters into challenging situations. Now in the past there have been instances like presenters being put on a roller coaster, or walking a tightrope above a river.
But what Helen did was somewhat remarkable. This time last year she had never set foot in a kayak and could not even paddle across a pond so it was with great awe and admiration that for the UK charity Sports Relief they asked Helen to kayak 2000 miles down the Amazon River. Not only did she complete this but she broke world records along the way, the longest solo Kayak ever, the longest row in 24 hours and also the only woman to ever kayak the Amazon. A remarkable achievement.
The second item I was due to blog on was I read today that the introduction of several animals back into the UK was being proposed including, Beer, Deer, Wild Boar and Elk. Sometimes when I am in Sweden I see these animals in Sweden it does throw me but to see these in the UK would be something very special for pagans like myself!
But the main focus of this blog is something that I read about in the paper today about social networking. A company in Sweden is developing a new Iphone/android application that if you take a photo of someone it will search Facebook and other social networking applications and if the photo matches it will display that persons name and phone number.
Recognizr creates a 3D model of a person’s face when you point your phone camera at them. The information is then kicked up to a cloud server that compares the facial recognition information to a database. It then slings back matching the subject’s name and links to any social networking sites they’ve given it access to.
The augmented reality part of Recognizr shows the social networks that the subject is a member of floating in a halo around their head in the photo your phone snaps.
There are obviously plenty of privacy problems highlighted by Recognizr but the system will only allow you to identify people who have opted into the service by uploading a photo and a profile.
So can you imagine some creep walking into a pub and pointing his phone at a girl he likes points the camera and then suddenly has all this information available about her. Will the lead to people not putting up real photos of themselves on Facebook and Twitter? It’s a dangerous app and one that will need protecting.