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Despite the fact that he is perhaps one of the world's most famous gangsters, Al Capone wasn't first imprisoned for bootlegging, racketeering or the gangland execution of the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre. Instead, Capone was first imprisoned for tax evasion. Whether you're a law abiding citizen or a tax dodging criminal, there's something eerily omniscient about the taxman. According to a recent Wall Street Journal article by Laura Saunders, our all-seeing state revenue agents have increased their power to catch tax evaders through Facebook, MySpace and Google.

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Earlier this year, a company called Face.com brought facial recognition technology to Facebook by way of an application called Photo Finder which scanned through untagged photos and identified the people within them. Now, using the same facial recognition algorithms that made Photo Finder possible, the company is introducing Photo Tagger, an app which scans through select online albums to automate the tagging process.

As mobile phones continue to develop, the improvements to geolocation features, video capabilities, and processor speed combined with APIs from various web services are helping to make augmented reality the next big thing in mobile applications. On open platforms like Android, we've already seen amazing developments, including things like Layar, an augmented reality app that describes the world around you, and TwittARound, an app which shows you nearby tweets. But one of the items on our Augmented Reality wishlist - AU facial recognition - isn't something we've seen come about just yet. It almost seems too futuristic to be real. And yet...here it is. Swedish software and design company The Astonishing Tribe is developing an AU concept called Augmented ID that "sees" people and tells you who they are.

This morning, Face.com announced that they're bringing advanced facial recognition technology to Facebook by way of a new application called Photo Finder. Using proprietary facial scanning algorithms, this application scans through your photos and those public photos belonging to your friends in order to identify and suggest tags for the untagged people within them. The results of these scans are highly accurate - almost frighteningly so - and should lead to some interesting discoveries as the app spreads through Facebook when it finally becomes public.