Future Tech: Business Cards by Photo

Future tech: A mobile device employing facial recognition to identify the occupants of a photograph and automatically retrieve information about them via the web.

Type: Mobile application.

Tagline: Shazam meets photos.

What's around today:

• Camera enabled smartphone - photos on the go and the internet readily accessible


• Facebook - the largest database of tagged photographs of individuals in the world


• Picasa - in version 3.5 Google implemented facial recognition.  It can identify people without concern of age, sunglasses, hats, hair, shadow, or direction they're facing, tag them, and sync them with your Google contacts.

Everyday scenario:

Take a photo of a new contact and their name, email, and phone number is saved to your phone/contacts along with the location and time you met.  Your face is your always available business card.

The future freaks me out scenario:

At a bar, feeling confident, looking to make your move .  Snap a photo, discreetly, from across the room.  Facebook profile retrieved.  Looks like she's got a German Shepard.  Conversation topic acquired.

What's preventing this today:

• Though facial recognition has taken tremendous strides it's not perfect and does a better job of identifying a smaller pool of faces, with 300 million users on Facebook and counting computing time would take days with lots of possible misidentifications


• Privacy issues abound

Estimated arrival: 5 years, 2014

Future Tech

I'm a curious individual.  The infinity of space, what it means to be human, the existence of name-your-deity, all things that I ponder.  Also, all things that I am in no why qualified to speculate on.

However, as a computer/tech nerd who feels pretty plugged into the scene, I feel I have a little bit more "cred" in that department.

I've always liked exploring shifts in how we do things, seeing one tiny idea balloon into a cultural phenomenon (i.e. Facebook) and anticipating the next one.  As of late I've enjoyed assembling the bits and pieces of today's technologies into a viable future product.

Since these postulations are a recurring things I decided to create this, the Future Tech category.

Future proofed

It looks like someone broke digg.com using irony.

Yet Another Blog Reboot

I've probably started a dozen blogs over the years, always with the best intentions, always promising "this time I will update weekly".  As is evident by this post, it has not gone so well, yet here I am again.

Truth is, I'm trying to make something of a name for myself as a software devloper in the world of the wide web and I need a landing page.  Here it is.

My previously abandon blogs have not been entirely without purpose.  For example, I've learned that I'm bad at blogging because it takes so much of my time.  I write a blog entry in the manner I write a college essay: thoroughly checked for grammar, read over multiple times, with a single tense and voice, ready to be turned in to the professor.  I'm making some sacrifices.

I will make grammar mistakes.  I will ramble.  I will lose focus.  I will err on the side of short.  I will suck at many things writing.

Welcome!

Beer Blogging

I'm not a connoisseur, i don't even much about what the differences between a hoppy and malty beer, but I decided I'm gonna blog a little bit about them anyway.

I live in Colorado which is 2nd to Oregon as far as microbreweries go and one of my favorite thing to do is pick out a six pack I've never had before. I've been through quite already, but now's as good a time to start as any.

an engagment is like buying groceries

It's hard to sit here in a quiet office building on the 1st of 2009 and not find myself reflecting. Today and days previous you can pull up nearly any frequently updated website or blog and find a "Greatest Moment of 2008" or "2008 in pictures" or even "What Went Wrong in 2008". Forming your own personal analysis of the last 365 days is inevitable.

2008 was a pretty big year for me. Two major lifetime milestones, purposing to my Fiance and buying my first house, were met. They are tremendously important things to me and truly momentous occasions but reflecting upon them as a snapshots seems like an oversimplification.

I've realized recently that in life so many big things, things that seem daunting, scary, or even unachievable are no different than going to the grocery store. I'll explain:

At the beginning of this year the idea of purposing was terrifying, not in the "my life as a single guy is over" kinda way, but in the "this is a really really really big deal" kinda way. Unlike so much else up to that point in my life there was no deadline or requirement I had to meet. It was all up to me, to be done on my own accord of which every detail to be decided was my own responsibility. It's one of those things you've seen in the movies and on tv dozens of times, one of those stories relived by grandparents at family gatherings. You could say it's got alot of hype surrounding it and that's what had me nervous.

One day, in my head I decided that this proposal was going to happen. I did some initial thinking on the when, where, and how but it was still nothing more than a brain storm. When my Mom came for a visit in March things became real when I first verbalized my intention. I now had someone that could hold me to my word.

As I continued through the process - the ring buying, the how I was going to ask, etc. - I soon realized that this proposal thing was merely a series of tiny pieces put together. This daunting and overshadowing idea, once broken down, became an entirely manageable process.

In buying the house I again experienced a moment that was actually the product of months of searching, planning, financing, and paper signing. Though incredibly stressful at times, piece by piece it was manageable.

In my professional and personal life I've seen so many friends and coworkers that have sacrificed opportunities by viewing these kinds of moments as too much or too difficult. Taking a new job or moving to a new city are indeed big and sometimes overwhelming ideas when you look at them from a distance but up close submitting a resume or browsing for apartments online are far from unachievable. They are simple tasks, like buying groceries, and that's where it all starts.

Happy New Year!

My Resolution: Eat healthier!