Face

NASA wants to send your face into space

I doubt I'll be able to take a cool self-portrait in space like astronaut Garrett Reisman did last month, but NASA is giving me a chance to do the next best thing: put a digital image of my mug on one of the final two Space Shuttle missions scheduled for later this year.

The program's called Face in Space, and it's easy enough to join. You just sign up, pick your mission, upload your photo for free, and you're set.

You'll get a flight confirmation and shuttle updates in your inbox throughout the mission and … Read more

Mainstream game designers go social in FrontierVille

FarmVille creator Zynga has a new social game launching today on Facebook, called FrontierVille. With 60 million active players (although the number can vary widely month to month), FarmVille is the unstoppable juggernaut of social games (a relatively new category, which includes games played on Facebook and other social networking platforms), and Zynga is hoping lightning strikes twice.

The new game takes the action in an even more rural direction than FarmVille, setting up shop in a far-flung frontier town. Game designer Brian Reynolds describes it as, "Oregon Trail meets Little House on the Prairie meets FarmVille." And … Read more

The 404 597: Where we're getting FaceTime with the Apple iPhone 4 (podcast)

Don't call it the 4G or the 4HD. The Apple iPhone 4 is here and Gizmodo ruined the surprise. As predicted, the new handset has *almost* all of the rumored features, including a 960X640 resolution display, a bigger battery, HD video recording and editing, a three-axis gyroscope, an upgraded 5MP rear camera, and a front-facing camera for use with Apple's new video chat program FaceTime.

Apple's new Retina display promises 4X improvement over the current screen, and Steve's demo screenshots show significant improvements to text and images, but CNET's own TV expert David Katzmaier takes issue … Read more

Three reasons FaceTime will flop

FaceTime is going to fizzle. 

During yesterday's Apple Worldwide Developers Conference event, Steve Jobs saved this new addition for his venerated "one more thing" announcement, effectively celebrating it as the killer iPhone 4 feature.

In case you missed it, FaceTime offers Skype-like video calling via the iPhone 4's front-facing camera. It's not entirely Skype-like, though; for now, FaceTime works only over Wi-Fi networks, not 3G.

I admit that video calling sounds cool on paper. It even looks cool in demo videos like the one up top. But you know what? I'm not interested. … Read more

The urge to merge

Ever wonder what your hypothetical children would look like with your significant other or your favorite celebrity? Or what the product of a union between your dog and cat would produce? Morpheus Photo Mixer is a simple program that allows users to merge two separate images into one, with interesting and sometimes hilarious results.

The program's interface is plain and intuitive. Users simply load the two images they want to work with and then start aligning the desired features, using the real-time preview as a guide. The alignment process is a matter of surrounding the desired characteristics with dots … Read more

Apps emerge to reset Facebook privacy settings

New third-party applications are trying to make it easier to reset Facebook privacy settings, following recent changes from the company that make a sizable chunk of profile content public by default when it was once under lock and key.

A firewall and spam filter company called Untangle launched a tool on Monday called SaveFace, which takes the form of a browser bookmark utility and sets as many Facebook profile elements as it can--contact information, friend lists and connections, wall posts--to "friends only."

"We wanted to help our customers get back to [the] Facebook of 2005," Untangle … Read more

Face.com opens its face recognition tech to devs

The facial recognition technology that powers Face.com is now available to third-party developers. Those who are interested in using it inside of their applications will be able to take advantage of an open API that the company is making public Monday morning.

For consumers, Face.com's technology brings some very interesting things to the table. Face has already offered a tagging tool, as well as a recognition-based alert service for Facebook. But not everyone keeps their photos there. Using the new API, developers could build similar facial recognition tools into both desktop and Web based photo organizing apps … Read more

Fooling face recognition systems with makeup

The next time you see someone with makeup that puts David Bowie to shame, don't laugh too much. He or she may be cleverly trying to fool face recognition and detection systems with a crazy or asymmetrical design.

It's generally not easy to avoid being spotted by face recognition and detection systems because they use a rather solid algorithm to identify faces, explains The Register:

Based on the so-called Viola-Jones method (PDF), the algorithm examines the spatial relationships of an object captured in an image and looks for features commonly found in faces. Most faces have a dark … Read more

Microsoft sponsors new Web font standard

With a surprise boost from Microsoft, the promise of rich typography on the Web just got a big step closer to reality.

The software company's involvement emerged Monday with sponsorship of a newer effort at the World Wide Web Consortium to standardize Web-based fonts with technology called the Web Open Font Format (WOFF). It's a fresh indicator of Microsoft's serious engagement with new Web standards--and it's a big boost for designers' attempts to stretch the Web beyond just the few typefaces that today can be expected to be already installed on people's computers.

It's … Read more