Face

Facebook has acquired Face.com, confirming rumors that the companies were in talks.

Face.com announced the acquisition on its blog today, saying that its work with Facebook will offer it "more opportunities" to build products.

The Tel Aviv, Israel-based startup offers application programming interfaces (API) for third-party developers to incorporate Face.com's facial-recognition software into their applications. The company has released two Facebook applications: Photo Finder, which lets people find untagged pictures of themselves and their Facebook friends, and Photo Tagger, which lets people automatically bulk-tag photos on Facebook. Face.com launched its open API in … Read more

Every year, we engage in the same dance: Apple announces a new version of iOS, and we instantly start wondering how our devices will change as a result.

iOS announcements tend to work forward for phones (the new iPhone is expected this fall), but for iPads they work backward: the third-generation iPad with Retina Display came out in March.

A host of new iOS 6 features change some of what the iPhone can be. Will iOS 6 change the iPad, too? Yes, if you're thinking of heavily using Siri or own a 4G/3G third-gen iPad or iPad 2.… Read more

Apple's FaceTime video chat service will finally work over a carrier's cellular network, making it even easier for people to make video phone calls from anywhere. But will the new app gobble up bandwidth on capped data plans?

Since it was introduced in 2010 with the release of the iPhone 4, the FaceTime video chat application, which allows people with iOS devices to call each other over video, only worked on Wi-Fi networks. The reason given at the time for the limitation was that carriers like AT&T were afraid of what FaceTime would do to their … Read more

Facebook is in negotiations to acquire facial-recognition technology company Face.com, according to a report from Israeli business publication Calcalist (Google Translate).

The social-networking giant is said to be offering $80 million to $100 million, according to a report on Newsgeek.

CNET has contacted Facebook for comment and will update this report when we learn more.

The technology made a splash in 2009 when it released Photo Tagger, a free third-party application for Facebook that uses facial recognition technology to automatically tag photos of people, as well as a recognition-based alert service for Facebook. In 2010, Face.com released an open API … Read more

A few days ago, CNET photographer Josh Miller was going around the office making Cinemagrams. I had seen the app before on the iTunes App Store most-popular lists, but had assumed it was simply a version of Instagram for video. When Josh showed me how the app worked, I was really impressed.

After seeing what Cinemagram could do (more about that below), I started wondering about other animation apps in the App Store and came upon several that were impressive for different reasons, but popular for the interesting animations you could make with your iPhone.

This week's collection of apps is all about making short animations. The first makes stop-motion animations by taking several photos of a moving object. The second makes short videos into animated GIFs you can add to text messages. The third is Cinemagram, an app that lets you make photo and video hybrids that are simple and fascinating.… Read more

It's time to share your searches, stream original content and earn good Karma:

With all the news focused around Facebook, Microsoft just quietly launched its own social network for students called So.cl (pronounced "social"). It's different from Facebook and Google Plus in that it is focused around search. What students search for on So.cl is shared with other So.cl users -- and it can be shared on other networks like Facebook. The idea is to give students a quick and easy way to share information found through searches.

Hulu has unveiled 10 original and exclusive shows … Read more

My watch is an iPod Nano. It's not perfect. In fact, there are many ways I'd like it to be better. But, it works. It also looks cool.

Those are two seemingly small details that are in fact quite major when considering a smart watch these days. "Working" is a matter of opinion and design in some cases, but the point is that the iPod Nano-as-a-watch does exactly what you think it does, and it does it well. So far, that can't be said for Sony's SmartWatch, a confusing remote for Android phones that ends up doing less than you expect it to, yet somehow is hard to even work in that limited capacity. I had a chance to try one out here at CNET, and was surprised at how Sony's solution was good-looking, but a complete slave requiring Bluetooth and an Android phone to get anything done -- even tell the time. That's a problem. A good watch can't mess that part up.… Read more

Photofunia is a ridiculously simple photo effects app that lets you drop your photos into funny and interesting scenes, similar to those you might find at an amusement park photo booth. If, say, you want to see what your face might look like on a billboard in Times Square, Photofunia has an effect for that. How about on the cover of Esquire Magazine? Photofunia's got that covered, too. With an incredible number of effects available, the possibilities seem endless.

To get started with Photofunia, just fire up the app and start looking for an effect you like. You can … Read more

The campaign to get Facebook to appoint a female board member is ramping up. The FACE IT campaign launched earlier this week to draw attention to the fact that the social-networking site had no women on its board of directors and now other groups and individuals are signing on.

Joining the campaign today is the group Ultraviolet, which is a women's group co-founded by Nita Chaudhary who was most recently the outspoken campaign and organizing director for MoveOn.org Political Action. Although Ultraviolet is fairly new on the scene, it already boasts 300,000 members.

"The fact that … Read more