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Polar Rose Combines Image Search and Facial Recognition

Polar RoseA website called PolarRose.com is planning to launch an image search website that combines people's photographs with "face recognition algorithms." This may make it easy to search for a person's name and have the search engine return a bunch of photographs containing that person. Search Engine Watch blogs that the site will also rely on the help of its users to tag names on people.
Using what Tim O'Reilly calls 'bionic software', "Polar Rose relies on a combination of our unique face recognition algorithms and the collective intelligence of our users.

The face recognition technology used was originally developed by CTO Jan Erik Solem during his M.Sc and Ph.D. stints at the universities of Lund and Malmö in southern Sweden. It's unique in that we are able to extract 3D information from regular 2D images, an approach that radically improves the short-comings of existing face recognition approaches.

However, we don't and can't rely exclusively on face recognition, but also harness the collective intelligence of our users who help train our software and tag names on people we haven't seen before" according to their website.
Obviously, there are some major privacy concerns here for people who do not want to be found or do not want all their photographs discovered. There could also be concerns if the search engine were to incorrectly label a photograph as being person X when it fact it was not person X. There are also concerns that a search engine like PolarRose.com could one day be expaned and used to identify people using images and video from various public cameras. Polar Rose also offers a blog that will keep you informed of the latest developments with the innovate image search tool.

Posted on January 4, 2007
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New People Search Called Spock in Development

Spock News.com reports that a new people search tool called Spock is in the work that will be able to provide a photograph and information about people. The site will launch with 100 million profiles.
Spock, a start-up that wants to make it easier to find personal information about people on the web, has launched its private beta.

Type in a name, and Spock says it can serve up a picture, address, occupation, interests and other information. Conversely, you can type in an occupation and location ("Rodeo Clown, Lubbock") and it will spit up people that fit that category.
VentureBeat explains how Spock could help you find relevant informatoin about a celebrity.
Here’s an example of how it works: If you type in "actress," Spock returns results like Google — with listings down a page. In this case, the first entry is Felicity Huffman, who Spock’s engine finds as the most relevant for "actress." (Now, if you type in “actress” into Google, you'll see why Spock has a chance; there are few actresses in the results, except for the annoying site ActressArchives at the top). Moreover, as both Spock and LinkedIn make their profiles more popular, these will rank higher in Google’s results anyway.

Continuing with our "actress" example, you first get a photo of Huffman, but you also get a bunch of tags underneath telling you how she is relevant. For example, there's tag for "Oscar nominee for best actress," and "Desperate Housewives," for which she is well known. There's a "Wikipedia" tag. If you click on these tags, Spock will take you its relevant results for that tag. This gives users a way of searching for information related to the Huffman.

The tag font size gets smaller if Spock's engine detects the tag isn't relevant for the person. So if users create a "sexy" tag for Huffman, the tag may get larger or smaller, depending on how many people agree. Spock gives users an option of clicking on the tag and selecting "yes" or "no." If they select no, Spock factors this into its database. Then, if you type in "sexy actress," Huffman will have fallen slightly in the ranking. Spock has built ways to keep people from gaming the system. If you want to add tags, for example, you have register - one way for Spock to monitor usage.
We won't know how accurate Spock is until it launches but it does sound like a significant competitor for people finding sites like Zoominfo.

Posted on November 16, 2006
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Website Gathering Personal Histories From Last 50 Years

The People HistoryA website called The People History has launched. The goal is to create a social history of the past fifty years using personal stories.
The People History is a site dedicated to preserving our memories for future generations Many of the things we accept as part of our way of life did not exist just 30 years ago, and many of the events that occurred before the coming of the Internet are well documented historically but do not have many memories from the people who lived through those events and changes . As each generation passes more memories will be lost and we hope with this site to create a social history from the last 50 years created by the people who lived through those events and changes
Visitors do not need to register or have to include an email address to leave a memory. People History says that all memories are vetted prior to inclusion and it can take up to 48hrs for your memory to be included.

Posted on August 15, 2006
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Tickle Launches Ringo Photo-Sharing Tool

Tickle Inc. has announced the launch of Ringo, which helps friends and family connect online. The utility offers secure address book and photo-sharing features that regularly updates friends, family and co-workers when an addition is made to their contact information or photos. Tickle Inc. also offers Tickle.com, a matchmaking and social networking service.

Posted on April 11, 2005
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ZoomInfo Compiles People Info

ZoomInfo is a new search engine that provides information about people. ZoomInfo gets informaton about people by extracting it from websites and online resources. The company also lets people enter and modify a personal profile. The website also offers fee-based services for corporations. Associated Press reports that some Internet privacy advocates are concerned. However, the company did tell the AP that it would let people delete their profiles. Currently, ZoomInfo says it offers 25,579,564 summaries of people on the Web.

Posted on April 1, 2005
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