Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Big companies towards biometrics: Facebook acquires Face.com


Facebook has announced its acquisition of Israeli facial recognition technology Face.com
Face Recognition
Last updates report that the price was between $55 and $60 million, in a mix of stock and cash. Thanks to this acquisition Facebook will have the possibility to finally include and improve mobile tagging for photos leveraging on biometrics technologies.
Face.com was funded five years ago and it is specialized in mobile facial recogition. Its technlogy could  allow users to upload photos to their Facebook profile on the go, instantly receive suggestions of whom to tag, and confirm the tags with one click.
The importance of this is related to the traffic on Facebook. By increasing the number of tags through mobile tagging Facebook will increase the engagement of users: once a user receives the notification that he has been tagged in a photo, he will probably go to Facebook and check it, incresing the number of visits and the traffic on the site.
It is clear that, after the $1 billion Instagram acquisition, Facebook is targeting mobile photos and the network of users which share them, creating a complete platform to win in the market of mobile photos.

Wednesday, June 6, 2012


Personal biometrics at home? Microscope out of photocamera


Here we are. We connect 400 mm lens with a reversed 17mm lens. Fix a flashlight to the lens. It will play the role of the object table with light.


Your hair should look like this with this device.


After that I foresee the usual struggle between two religions - Canon and Nikon. Not sure who goes to win, but since Canon's lenses are cheaper, then Canon's owners have greater chances to have more material to boast.



Biometrics? Did you think when it can fail? 




Have an idea what happened to this person?  Can you guess his profession?

It seems to me that biometrics can really fail from time to time… To give a hint, this person have something similar with the women in Southern countries where many of them have nice bodies because of the climate, way of life and nutrition, but have comparably bad facial skin because of the sun.

And this raises questions about ability of the biometric facial recognition systems to keep high percentage of successful recognition cases.  This means that still from time to time the system has to be loaded with updated original biometrics criteria. EER, Equal Error Rates – this is the measurement for fails to recognize the application.

… By the way the man has worked 28 years as truck driver.

The initial idea and the photo are taken from http://dimka-jd.livejournal.com/1748804.html#cutid1

My personal bio rhythms, sleep patterns and fragmented sleep time

My peers are inside MBA routine. And most of us need to split our time (that is not extendable – Oh God – only 24 hours per day) into studies, sleep and partying networking. And according to previous intakes usually a student can do only two out of these three.


I tried several ways of sleeping less and tried several ways to adapt my sleeping patterns to my MBA rhythm.  For instance, going to sleep earlier yesterday so that to wake up at 3 am today. Pros: higher concentration, same 5-6 hours of night sleep, more balanced sleep time between sundown and sunrise, none calling or whatsapping you, you start your sleep yesterday and not today.

Of course this is just one case out of other considerations on how to sleep less or how to sleep more optimally. I needed to go further to explore some assisting techniques and devices.

My strategy 1

Back in Russia I used a light alarm-clock that gradually ignites a powerful lamp next to your bad and launches some sounds of nature. In Russia, where winter nights are long and where I drive to work and back home in the dark, this works well. But here in Spain this does not really contribute to my perfect sleep as I have enough natural sun.

My strategy 2

I also tried so-called positive way of thinking (my peers may remember how I referenced to Napoleon Hill). Apart from Hill, there are books of Luiza Hey if I correctly recall the author’s name. The whole concept is concentrated on positive thinking, doing morning exercises and similar activities. In total this complex can save you around 2 hours of sleep per day (due to the fact that you use sleep to refresh and not to cure the stress you gained during the last day. By the way, I do not recommend to rush following Hill blindly – first read the abovementioned authors – they are rather inspiring [probably not like me here]. But their recommendations really work for me and a bunch of my friends . Maybe not 2 hours, but still an hour is ok. 2 hrs*365 days=730 hrs. 730hrs/24hrs per day = 30,41 days won per year!!!

My strategy 3

 Approximately a year ago I found that there is an alarm-clock that measures your phases of the sleep and wakes you when you are in a non-deep sleep. This should work for me, but I’m still greedy enough to spend around 300 EUR for the gadget.


How does it work?

A sensor distinguishes the sleep phases through your body’s movements. Within 30 minutes of the set waking time aXbo wakes us with pleasant waking sounds from an almostawake-moment.

The unique wake-up-algorithm of aXbo chooses the optimal wake up time through differentiating the various sleeping phases by tracking the body movements. It  thus determines the optimal wake up time. Your movements are detected and gathered with a comfortable towelling wristband and submitted to the sleep phase alarm clock.

You set your new aXbo as usual to your wake up time e.g. 7.00 a.m. The best wake up window is 30 minutes; e.g. you might be woken up at 6.47 a.m.-your optimal wake up time. Thus aXbo even gives you a little extra time.

Seems to me that business schools could have a wholesale contract with the company producing aXbo and make a present to the students in the opening ceremony day like we had in Segovia.

Sunday, June 3, 2012

Do you want to go to the cinema tonight?

Can you imagine the day when going to the cinema, watching television or by browsing the web your consumer behaviour can be tracked, analysed and your future behaviour influenced?












There are already a lot of thoughts put into practice by web advertising companies to study your behaviour when you are browsing a webpage or using an application. Particular designs and patterns are developed to make visitors respond in particular ways.  Companies go to great lenghts to track you and analyse your behaviour, trying to get inside your head before you even know it. 

Earlier this year Time Warner opened a state of the art behaviour lab to study people’s emotions and reaction to a wide range of media platforms and mobile devices. MediaLab tracks emotion via biometric monitoring, eye tracking, blood pressure, heart rate and respiration to understand human’s emotions.

The lab is built on a neuroscience research done by Innerscope Search: “after being exposed to stimulus, a person unconciously experiences emotions before thoughts, feelings or actions.“ 

"The Medialab's cutting-edge technologies and the breadth of its research capabilities will give our businesses and ad partners an unmatched ability to look inside the mind of the consumer as we develop even more engaging content," stated Jeff Bewkes, Chairman and CEO Time Warner Inc.
The Time Warner's Medialab has the ability to utilize its research capabilities within live programing, CNN has already taken advantage of Warner’s research center.

… and whether you like it or not, monitoring your biometrics is here to stay. You may think it's cool or creepy, analyzing your biometrics are the new ways to track you and get inside your head.