faces
Latest
iPhoto '09 uses face detection package from Omron
An intrepid tipster emailed us late yesterday, and described an interesting challenge: He figured that if Apple didn't develop iPhoto's face recognition technology themselves, who did? He disassembled the app using OTX, a developer tool based on Apple's otool, and found the areas of the software related to facial recognition. There, the string "OKAO" appeared, including in the "FaceRecognitionManager" object. OKAO Vision is a product from Japanese firm Omron Global that -- hey hey -- recognizes faces and their various features. Does the face have big eyes? Are they in trouble? What is the person looking at? The transliteration "okao" apparently means "face" in Japanese, according to their website. "OMRON is committed to raising the accuracy of face detection so that OKAO Vision can be used in many different lifestyle occasions and social settings," their website reads. iPhoto '09 must fit in with that plan. Omron has other facial recognition products, including software for mobile phones, and a camera-plus-hardware-plus-software console that can accurately tell if a person is smiling or not. The software works reasonably well, according to Gizmodo, but does pick up some false positives in patterns, or, say, Mount Rushmore.
TUAW Review: iPhoto '09 is a pretty picture
As noted by Robert yesterday, the first boxed copies of iLife '09 reached users today. The two iLife '09 apps that have changed the most are garnering the lion's share of excitement this week. iMovie and iPhoto have some rather dramatic improvements, and I'll detail the iPhoto changes here. Before you install, please note that the iLife '09 setup will nuke your older iLife apps. You'll need your original install disc to revert. I ran a Spotlight search and those old iLife apps are nowhere to be found. If you think you might want to roll back, be sure to back up your apps and your iPhoto library beforehand. When you start up iPhoto for the first time it updates your libraries and starts an immediate search for faces in your photos. That search goes on in the background, so you can do other things with iPhoto at the same time. Here's a rundown on the new features: The most technically advanced feature is Faces. iPhoto now does some face recognition to help you automatically find people in your bushel of images. You start by identifying a face, and you enter the person's name. iPhoto will then suggest matches in your library, and you can confirm them with a click. iPhoto generates a cork board where you can see one example of each face you have identified. Double-click on that face and it displays all the other faces that match. The technology is not perfect. It didn't get all the matches right, but when it was wrong I'd have to admit the person it found had a similar face. To try and trick it, I showed it a picture of a parrot. Although there were many similar shots of the same parrot, iPhoto utterly failed to match any of them. I think Faces wants human faces (although there are examples of penguins being recognized, and Mac|Life has tested it out successfully on feline faces). Check out the gallery for some close ups of iPhoto features and controls, and read on for more notes on the updated features. %Gallery-43286%
The Blizzard staff goes to the movies
So very funny. Take a few parts Blizzplanet Blizzard staff pictures page, and combine with a JibJab Flash app that lets you put your own pictures in, and you've got the makings of greatness seen above: Blizzard CM Drysc, starring in his own action movie as a rogue cop short on sanity and long on ammo, complete with cameo appearances by Nethaera, Feathers, Mike Morhaime (he's the boss, naturally), Metzen, Eyonix, and all the other Blizzard faces.Oh and there's more-- here's Neth and Drysc on the dance floor, a preview of what we'll see at the next BlizzCon, and Eyonix and Drysc... well, you might not want to watch that last one.Ivenoml of Hellscream put these all together, and salute to you, sir or madam, because these are darn funny. For their part, the Blizzard staff enjoyed them, too-- we're told by Eyonix that they're being passed around the company as we speak. So, so funny. Now we definitely need an item in WotLK called Unnecessary Force.[ via incgamers ]
The DS Life: The many faces of Noah Tsang
The DS Life is a weekly feature in which we scour the known world for narrative images of Nintendo's handheld and handheld gamers. If you have a photo and a story to match it with, send both to thedslife at dsfanboy dot com.This week's model, like all of us, has more to him than what can be seen in a single snapshot. He can be a young boy sitting idly on carpeted steps or a confident face on the street with mischief in his eyes, depending on the day. Join us past the post break, and see if you can recognize a bit of yourself in Noah's many faces.
Bugs show a little emotion
Sorandra over on Livejournal has an interesting bug happening when she runs WoW in Vista-- her female draenei is showing a different skin in different situations. Out of water, she's got the face you see up on the left. But in water, a different face appears. It looks like her toon just really hates water.Of course it's just a texture error (a known one, at that), most likely fixed by updating her video drivers. But it does kind of make you wonder a little bit why Blizzard doesn't bother implementing something like this for real, and making characters actually show facial animations. Sure, the mouths move, but we can't actually frown when we /frown or smile when we /smile. If it's this easy to change the face textures, it seems like it would be just as easy to show displeasure for real.The only obstacle might be that they'd have to design different textures for each gender and race, which would take a bit of time (time probably best spent on the actual patches and expansions). Still, a little more emotion would be fun to have. If Blizzard ever gets around to doing a graphics overhaul (much like Dark Age of Camelot has done with one of their expansions), hopefully something like this will be on the list.
