Picasa 3.5: Ruining Your Good Name with Face Recognition Tagging
Say goodbye to your controlled web presence and say hello to Picasa 3.5. Google released Picasa 3.5 with a slew of new features including facial recognition and name-based batch tagging, faster geo-tagging and better web uploading functionality. The service is so good at finding your mug and tagging it that wild photos from yesteryear can resurface and wreak havoc on your reputation.
In the same way that Picasa web albums offer facial recognition and tagging, Picasa 3.5 automatically scans all of your photos and groups similar faces together. From there users can add names to their photos in bulk and upload them to their web albums. One of the interesting features of this program is that names auto-complete from a user's Google contacts. While services like Face.com offer facial recognition-based tagging on Facebook, the Picasa 3.5 desktop software allows users to organize friends and groups of friends with a simple offline hard drive scan. After a couple minutes of scanning you can create name-based collages, slideshows and geo-tagged albums. The bottom line is, if you're going to get tipsy at a bachelor party, you better hope your friends have the good sense to uncheck those photos before they start uploading your Coyote Ugly bar dance antics to the wedding slideshow.
Other new features include drag and drop geo-tagging over a Google map and simultaneous uploading and sharing. In the past, photo uploaders have had to go through the additional act of selecting specific contacts to share albums. Now users can alert their contacts to an album as it's going up. Your coworkers and family may get an eyeful. At this point, facial recognition software and batch tagging is making it tougher to put on the facade of being a respectable human being. It looks like underground speakeasys are about to see a resurgence. To download the new Picasa visit Picasa.google.com.
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This is just CRAP.
Thanks Whitney. Any interest in elaborating?
Umm, isn't this like Facebook when I started college all over again?
Posted by: Shana
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September 22, 2009 4:09 PM
Facial recognition is a great feature. If your friend posts a pic of you you don't like contact him/her and ask to remove it. I love the new feature.
Windows Live Photo Gallery had this feature like, ages ago.
I have been using it since the time it was launched .. and I just don't have one profile on it .. There were so many pics . that I have made different profiles for the pics ,, one for family pics .. one for office .. one for friends .. and I love managing them ,..it was hard to keep them all on my PC .. and the new features are cool .. :)
Cheers and keep clicking pics,
Daina
Extending face recognition to allow name tagging is a neat feature... and the ability to suggest other faces as being the same person... it will be interesting to see how accurate this is, esp when photos contain family members with similar faces. I use Picasa mainly for Google Earth 3D modelling, so face matching isn't a hot feature for me, but I will certainly give it a try.
Interesting stuff, worrying at the same time.
I download 3.5 but when I install it set up version 3 not 3.5 Do I have to uninstall be for I install?
Is there anyway to embed the new photo tag into the metadeta so other programs can recognize it?
We shall call it the "Orwell 2000". Sounds very scary.
What happens if you become extremely fat? They just build a Krispy Kreme near my work
More to the point, another way to think about it is. "i want to stalk you. i can search your name on google, find _you_ and dates the photos were taken and then locate you on a globe because someone let one slip"
Is there are global face base where picasa online stores the recognition data. I mean to say, even if your face comes up under different names would it show you under all your alias'?
btw time to tag the 13'000+ faces in my photos.
THIS Google company is getting more and more scary.
Next thing will be to link the streetview pics with you on them with google earth, the name tagging, geo tagging, and the google os gps/gprs location data, and all the content of your gMail messages. Your posted and viewed vids at youTube, and the data of your Google searches of the past year.
Oh, they also have your office documents...
Did I forget some?
How much info do you want about you in one place? How much interest would any government chasing dissidents have in this?
Come on people, this is really going too far!
Richard