A new tech startup that produces facial recognition camera systems tied to Facebook tagged photos, plans to offer the technology to more traditional physical stores so they could offer you appropriate deals as you enter their business. That’s great for stores that want to have more targeted information about you, based on a bit of your history and likes. But what about privacy, what are the implications?
For now, you are not included in this scheme unless you opt in via Facebook to a third party service. The service would then present tailored deals to your mobile device when you enter an establishment using the technology (currently being tested in Tennessee). Facedeals, the provider, says this simply bolsters and leverages check-ins so that local businesses have more personal information, and by knowing and targeting the products they offer you based on your likes and preferences they can seem more relevant, like discounted or free drinks for using the service at a bar & grill.
But what if you haven’t opted in to the service? Isn’t it kind of creepy to know that cameras still look for a match, so the service will still “automagically” go through the process involving gathering data about you without your opt-in? Not to mention taking your picture without your permission (unless entering a retail establishment is taken to convey a form of permission). The system is obviously hoping its efforts will result in a matched face belonging to someone who has opted in. But if not, will it store the data for later use? Either way, it takes your picture, hoping for a possible match through data mining activity, without your consent.
This means that if Facedeals’ (or similar startups’) equipment gains traction in the market, we could be seeing very real steps toward scenarios portrayed in futuristic movies like Minority Report, where the Chief John Anderton character walks through a mall, and is greeted by avatars welcoming him by name into their store, complete with discount offers calculated from the collection of data they are able to garner about him from various sources.
With a social media feed added to the mix, you could walk into a store and “the store” would not only know who you are, but if you’ve shared family tree information along with birthdays, the store may magically suggest gifts for your mother, since her birthday is in 5 days; but you never asked it to get that information. Or did you? If you don’t protect your profile information on Facebook, you may be inadvertently opting in to the whole scheme.
One comment suggests the technology is only trying to streamline what staff members at a store should be doing anyway, i.e. getting to know customers and offering to sell them things they want that fit their needs. Others complain that it’s a harbinger of events yet to come, where facial recognition might be required through Facebook photo match before you are allowed to use a given service. There are already websites that require a Facebook login to signup, could this now extend to physical storefronts as well, all aided by a hands-off recognition system?
For now, no. This isn’t a Facebook-driven service, it’s only a third party driven venture that interfaces through data from the platform.
Even if you don’t plan on using Facedeals any time soon, now might be a good time to review your profile and secure your Facebook privacy settings, especially related to information sharing and photo tagging. We’ll soon update our series on updating your privacy/security on Facebook to integrate the timeline feature (which I’ve been recently forced into).
2. Use Oracle VirtualBox to test Windows 8 Enterprise edition
Windows 8 is finally finished, and we now know it’ll beavailable from October 26. If you really need to see what it can do right now, though, Microsoft have just released an evaluation edition of Windows 8 Enterprise that can download and try for free.
And that means you’ll get access to several more corporate features which aren’t available in the regular or Professional Windows 8 editions. Like Windows To Go, for instance, which allows the operating system to boot and run from USB drives.
Beware, though -- this isn’t quite as generous as it sounds. The build will expire after 90 days, and you won’t be able to revert to a previous edition of Windows, or install a new copy over the top of the evaluation build. It’s really just for testing, not long-term use, so once the 90 days are up you’ll probably want to reformat and start again.
Still, if you only want a quick look at “what’s new” then the Enterprise edition is a simple way to do it. Especially if you run it from Oracle VirtualBox, say, which will allow you to run Windows 8 in a window on your Windows 7 desktop.
And this is very easy to set up. Install VirtualBox, click New, give your VM a sensible name and choose Windows/ Windows 8 as the operating system and version, give the VM as much RAM as you can spare, but otherwise accept the wizard’s default settings.
Then launch the VM, point it at your downloaded Enterprise edition ISO file, and within a moment or two the Setup program will launch. Follow this as usual and you’ll be viewing the Windows 8 desktop surprisingly quickly (the entire process took under 10 minutes on our trial PC).
Just keep in mind that Windows 8 introduces some new issues with screen resolution. In particular, you’ll need at least 1024×768 to access the Windows Store and run apps, and to snap apps – run two side-by-side – requires a resolution of at least 1366×768. If this is a problem then launch the Desktop app, right-click an empty part of the desktop, click Screen Resolution and choose whatever you need.
3. Fin Failure Spells Doom for Hypersonic Jet Test
The United States Air Force's third test flight of an X-51A Waverider hypersonic aircraft failed spectacularly Wednesday when it crashed seconds after being launched from a B-52 bomber. A faulty control fin was to blame, X-51A program manager Charlie Brink stated. "Everything was going correctly except for that small thing," Bill Hancock, a public affairs officer at the 88th Air Base Wing at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, told TechNewsWorld. "We had a good burn of the booster rocket and it separated from the scramjet, but it was the fin that caused the problem."
4. For iPhone 5, Apple Must Go Big and Skinny
The latest iPhone 5 rumors are giving it a similar form factor to the existing hot-selling iPhone 4 and 4S -- except with a bigger screen. Heck, if Apple doesn'tintroduce a bigger screen, it will be the biggest mistake in the history of the iPhone. Apple has to offer up a bigger screen to compete with the Android phones that have huge, gorgeous displays. Size matters. Yet some of the competing smartphones I've borrowed have great big screens but end up overdoing it.
5. GNOME's Ambitious OS Adventure
With all the ongoing debate over desktop environments here in the Linux blogosphere, there's never any shortage of discussion of the GNOME project, even on an ordinary day. Last Tuesday, however, was no ordinary day -- at least, if a certain blog post was anything to go by. "The idea of GNOME OS has been around for a couple of years," wrote GNOME UX designer Allan Day in said post. "The aspirations that are driving this process include things like providing a better experience for application developers, ..." Erm, what was that, you say? A GNOME OS?
6. KDE 4.9: As Pretty and Peppy as a Linux Desktop Can Be
The latest release earlier this month of the K Desktop Environment, or KDE, is a solid upgrade that could very well win back the hearts and fingers of Linux users who wandered off to other, less powerful desktop shells. I am particularly impressed with its smooth integration into the dedicated KDE distribution in Linux Mint 13. I lost interest in KDE after it left version 2.x behind. It was becoming clunkier to use and too much of a hassle to handle. With Gnome 3.x and Ubuntu's Unity environments even less appealing, I bounced between the Cinnamon and XFCE desktop alternatives.
7. Building the search engine of the future, one baby step at a time
Larry Page once described the perfect search engine as understanding exactly what you mean and giving you back exactly what you want. It’s very much like the computer I dreamt about as a child growing up in India, glued to our black-and-white TV for every episode of Star Trek. I imagined a future where a starship computer would be able to answer any question I might ask, instantly. Today, we’re closer to that dream than I ever thought possible during my working life—and here are some of the latest steps we’re taking today to make search even more intelligent:
1. Understanding the world
In May we launched the Knowledge Graph, our database of more than 500 million real-world people, places and things with 3.5 billion attributes and connections among them. The feedback has been phenomenally positive and we want to extend this feature to people outside the U.S. So starting today, you’ll see Knowledge Graph results across every English-speaking country in the world. If you’re in Australia and search for [chiefs], you’ll get the rugby team—its players, results and history.a
We’ll also use this intelligence to help you find the right result more quickly when your search may have different meanings. For example, if you search for [rio], you might be interested in the Brazilian city, the recent animated movie or the casino in Vegas. Thanks to the Knowledge Graph, we can now give you these different suggestions of real-world entities in the search box as you type:
Finally, the best answer to your question is not always a single entity, but a list or group of connected things. It’s quite challenging to pull these lists automatically from the web. But we’re now beginning to do just that. So when you search for [california lighthouses], [hurricanes in 2008] or [famous female astronomers], we’ll show you a list of these things across the top of the page. And by combining our Knowledge Graph with the collective wisdom of the web, we can even provide more subjective lists like [best action movies of the 2000s] or [things to do in paris]. If you click on an item, you can then explore the result more deeply on the web:
So far we can produce hundreds of thousands of lists involving millions of items, and we’ll keep growing to match your curiosity. A quick preview:
2. Putting your info at your fingertips
Sometimes the best answer to your question isn’t available on the public web—it may be contained somewhere else, such as in your email. We think you shouldn’t have to be your own mini-search engine to find the most useful information—it should just work. A search is a search, and we want our results to be truly universal. So we’re developing a way to find this information for you that’s useful and unobtrusive, and we’d love your feedback. Starting today, we’re opening up a limited trial where you can sign up to get information from your Gmail right from the search box.
So if you’re planning a biking trip to Tahoe, you might see relevant emails from friends about the best bike trails, or great places to eat on the right hand side of the results page. If it looks relevant you can then expand the box to read the emails:
We’re working on some even more useful features. For example, if you search for [my flights] we will organize flight confirmation emails for any upcoming trips in a beautifully easy-to-read way right on the search results page:
3. Understanding your intent
Often the most natural way to ask a question is by asking aloud. So we’ve combined our speech recognition expertise, understanding of language and the Knowledge Graph so that Voice Search can better interpret your questions and sometimes speak the answers back as full sentences. This has been available on Android for a few weeks and people love it. It’ll soon be available on your iPhone or iPad (iOS version 4.2+).
You just need to tap the microphone icon and ask your question, the same way you’d ask a friend. For example, ask “What movies are playing this weekend?” and you’ll see your words streamed back to you quickly as you speak. Then Google will show you a list of the latest movies in theaters near you, with schedules and even trailers. It works for everything from celebrity factoids to the height of Kilamanjaro and more. When Google can supply a direct answer to your question, you’ll get a spoken response too.
These are baby steps, but important ones on our way to building the search engine of the future—one that is much more intelligent and useful than it was just a few years ago. It’s a very exciting time to be working in this field.
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