Serendipity

Using Faces in iPhoto

I have blogged on this before here, or on another blog of mine, but was using iPhoto today and thought I'd try to assign a 'Face' to the various family images there.  Since I had a whole set of photos of Ryan already identified as such, I decided to go through them using Faces to Confirm that they are, in fact, of him.  The program then uses the information and some sort of algorithm to identify similar facial features on other faces in the entire library and asks me then to Confirm them as the person or not.

Doing this, of course I had alot of Ryan right away and confirmed those.  But then I kept going and pretty soon up popped:  his sister, Kate, and nephews/nieces [children of his older sister and brothers who are under 10 yrs].  It's a great feature of iPhoto and it also confirms that often there are subtle family commonalities even though everyone in a family might seem distinctly different.

iPhoto and Face Recognition

I probably commented on this before, but I went back to iPhoto09 and was working with a library full of scanned images and thought I'd pass this on.

I have been scanning in photos and have concentrated on family 
and friend photos so far.  Then I thought I would use Faces to put 
names to people.  So did so with a few people.  When I went to 
Confirm Name for our daughter, it pulled up a whole bunch of photos 
which, indeed, did include her.  And those which did not included me, 
my husband and/or our son...meaning there's evidently enough identity 
points to find the similarities.

It gets really interesting when you have exhausted Confirm Name and 
it starts picking out faces of others in the family or among friends 
and you can, sort of, see some features which are similar.  All and 
all a good timesaving feature and fun to boot.

iPhone Applications

If you're like me, there are WAY too many applications to download to your iPhone, plus some are expensive [for professional use no doubt] and some really are bad.  So, what to do?  Find in-depth reviews.  So, I read the reviews and discussions at the iTunes Store.  Then I go to other iPhone information sources to find what information I can, or else I just shell out the 99 cents for the experience and fun of trying something [or get it for free!].

If you Google/research 'iPhone websites' you will find plenty.  I like iLounge and iPhoneAtlas, but the best right now [IMHO] is 148Apps.  You can Twitter it and keep an eye on things coming in as they do, fast and furious.  Not that I have had time to even test out the apps. that are on my iPhone, but I will!

Social Networking

I have been exploring the various social networking sites and over time, have been trying to discipline myself to keep up my blogs [one at HL, one at JZ and this one] and social network contacts [Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter mainly].

Candidly, getting my iPhone made a big difference because each of the sites has an iPhone application [my TypePad site runs my blogs and the others have their own applications], so I've used that to upload thoughts & information [trying to avoid non-informative or non-helpful posts].

Another GREAT application to promote discipline in this area is QuicKeys, a Mac application [also available for Windows] which allows you to program various keystrokes or events to occur through the selection of a key, setting of a time or happening of an event.  I set all my blogs/sites to open in Safari at 7:00 am.  I certainly can close them and do nothing, but this serves as a prompt to suggest to me it's time to update.  QuicKeys is a program made by Startly Technologies, a Des Moines-based company, which is an added benefit.

Safety Tips

Using Facebook:  From AllFacebook.com, 10 Privacy Settings You should know.

Using Macs:  The need for more safe computing, even for Mac users.  From UGN Infomanager.  [I do use a virus program and am careful about my setups - such as NOT selecting the preference to open 'safe' files in SystemPrefs]

A shepherd in the Cretan countryside [he and his wife very kindly invited us in for coffee and cookies one afternoon]

Yet another great video from Wimp.com

The Funny Video of yesterday is now joined with a fascinating and fun one of today, something from the TED Talks series, about Toy Blocks with minds of their own.  Watch it:

Siftables.

What if a corporation today had to design a Stop Sign?

Funny video.  And others in the collection are likewise.

Great Podcasts

Rather than repost here I'll just note that I did a posting on my HerringLaw blog about Great Podcasts I like which may be of interest.  HerringLaw Blog.

Freebies

Being careful about spending money when I don't have to, I'm always on the lookout for free things == music, computer software, etc. [although of course I'm careful about what I get and download]. Was on iTunes just today and went to iTunes U, which is a great resource of information, and it's free.

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture is there, TED Talks, information to help understand the financial meltdown, lectures on a whole bunch of interesting topics. Heartily endorsed.

And for the heck of it, an image from Venice.