The slant on the segment was whether face recognition was an invasion of privacy for the average US citizen. This continues to be an ongoing debate but suffice it to say – “your face is more personally identifiable than your written signature”. The 60 Minute segment explored a study done at Carnegie Mellon University by researchers there who performed the following experiments:

• In one experiment, Acquisti’s team identified individuals on a popular online dating site where members protect their privacy through pseudonyms.

• In a second experiment, they identified students walking on campus — based on their profile photos on Facebook.

• In a third, the team predicted personal interests and, in some cases, even the Social Security numbers of the students, beginning with only a photo of their faces.

For full details on the study go here: http://www.cmu.edu/homepage/society/2011/summer/facial-recognition.shtml

The 60 Minute segment also highlighted that European governments were far more advanced in their protection of online personal data such as face signatures and that the US still has no legislation in this area. So big business is free to use the data as they see fit, and this may not always be in the best interests of the general population.

As we have pointed out in previous posts on this website, it is important to manage your personal face data as you would any other private personal data such as your credit card or social security number.

We have been putting out new releases of the desktop version about once a month for the last while. We are not sure that we can continue that pace during 2013, but we still have some great ideas and users have been offering us excellent suggestions and feedback.

We recently dropped the license price for the desktop product from $49 to $29, so if you really like Fotobounce then please buy a license for the ad-free version.

Our main focus right now is on the Fotobounce Cloud version. The beta testing with our group of beta volunteers has been going well. We anticipate that we will be going live with Fotobounce Cloud before the end of February 2013. The first version will give you a great set of tools to manage, tag and share photos stored on Dropbox. As the year progresses we would like to add many new features to the cloud version.

It is an exciting time for Fotobounce! Thank you for your support.

Regards, Ray Ganong
Co-CEO & President

We are totally pumped because with, Fotobounce Cloud, you will be able to manage and share your photos from anywhere and from any device. At the same time, your valuable photos are protected with the secure and trusted cloud-storage services offered by Dropbox. That protection extends to Fotobounce’s private sharing features, so you can share your photos without compromising privacy.

Fotobounce Cloud further simplifies photo organization with automated tagging via its advanced face recognition indexing. That’s just one cool feature of Fotobounce Cloud. We’ll be adding many more so stay tuned for those announcements. We will also be connecting Fotobounce Desktop with Fotobounce Cloud to provide the ultimate in sharing functionality.

Stay tuned for our official Fotobounce Cloud announcement. We look forward to your comments and feedback.

The Fotobounce Team

When any web service scans your photos, finds faces, and compares those faces with known people in your contact list, this action should require your explicit approval. It should be very clear that you own the data and that you are not expecting that it be used outside the context of sharing your photos with friends. It’s no secret that, because they do not follow these basic privacy practices, the use of your data is definitely a concern with Facebook and many other web-based services that use face recognition.

The data generated by the face detection process is essentially a “face signature” that is as personal and private as any other data identifying you – including your social security number and your written signature. This begs the question, “With what web services would you normally share your social security number?” Typically, you would only share that info with banks and government organizations whom you trust and know that they are applying appropriate measures to protect your very personal information from the “bad guys.” Although there have been countless examples, online users do not seem to appreciate that, while face recognition is cool technology, it can also be used in a myriad of ways for nefarious purposes.

For organizing photos, face recognition is a huge time-saver, making it infinitely easier to access your treasured photos. Fotobounce applies advanced and accurate face recognition technology to the task of organizing your photos and was designed from the outset with privacy of your information top of mind. When you share photos with trusted friends and family members (a.k.a. Bouncers) via our Peer-to-Peer network feature, the face recognition data is also shared with those people, saving them time in tagging their photos — But at no time is this information made available to the public.

Like photos, music is a great connector – that’s what was going through my mind one night a few years ago as I watched my friend Mike Branton captivate his audience, doing what he does best. What Mike does best is create and share music – specifically the blues.

My second thought was how, not being able to find photos, is like having the blues – you get frustrated, a bit discouraged. This is not typically what one thinks about when enjoying the blues, I’ll grant you. Maybe a few glasses of wine had my mind following unusual patterns of thought – I can’t really say.

This led to my third thought which was, “Why don’t we compose a blues song about lost photos?” (It must have been too much fresh air that evening that sparked this thought!) Still, it seemed like a good idea, even in the bright clarity of a new day. I mentioned it to my wife, April, and asked if she’d like to take a stab at writing some lyrics with me. (She can be quite eloquent with pen and paper.) Not at all sure of the purpose of this little adventure, she agreed so I called Mike and asked if he’d be game to put it all to music if we provided the lyrics. Like my wife, Mike gave me the distinct impression that, while he wasn’t sure why I would want to do this, he’d be happy to give it a shot.

The rest, as they say, is history. April wrote the lyrics. (I was allowed some collaborative input, albeit minimal, which was probably all for the best.) Mike provided the musical talent, allowing me to drop in and enjoy the in-studio creative process. (He also allowed minimal collaborative input, again, probably for the best.)

Why do a song for Fotobounce? Why not? Like I said, I think photos and music are two powerful mediums that can be used to bring people closer together. That’s why Fotobounce was created – to make it easy and fun to connect with those you care about. So have fun using Fotobounce so you don’t have to worry with lost photos. And I hope you enjoy listening to The Lost Photo Blues as much as we enjoyed creating it.

Here is the song on Youtube:

If you would like an MP3 version of the song please email me: ray [dot] ganong [at] appliedrec.com

Ray Ganong
President, Fotobounce

We also received a mention from Marc Saltzman in his blog on Moneyville.ca. Click here for that posting. Marc has been a vocal supporter of Fotobounce since our inception and we really appreciate it.

1. Facebook reduces the resolution on your photos to save on their storage costs. Even though they’ve increased the resolution of photos they store, Facebook photos are still at less than full-resolution.

2. Facebook strips the meta data (EXIF is the techie term) from your photos. This means the data about when the photo was taken, what camera it what taken with and other pertinent info is gone as soon as you upload the photo to Facebook.

This means that if you lost your photos, you would be able to restore a reduced resolution copy of the photo and it will be missing some key data denoting date taken and so forth. In addition, you would have to copy these photos back to your computer “one at a time.” Wouldn’t that be a fun way to spend an evening or a weekend?!

Let’s not forget that Facebook assumes no liability for keeping your photos intact. They will try their best to maintain them but you have no contractual relationship with Facebook. You are not paying them money to take the best care possible of your valuable photos. So why consider Facebook as a viable photo storage area?

On top of the above, navigating the Facebook photo and album structure is not the easiest thing on the planet to do. It wasn’t, and never will be designed, with photo organization in mind.

Then there’s the privacy aspect – or lack thereof – of using Facebook to store your photos. Let’s say you are diligent and you mark your photos visible only to friends. That still allows friends to download and re-upload the photo to their Facebook albums and then you never know what happens to the photos. Once this happens, your photos can be put to all kinds of uses by Facebook apps and other web crawlers.

So, I hope this helps shed some light on the topic and convinces you to evaluate and consider a dedicated private photo management solution like Fotobounce. Fotobounce plays nicely with Facebook and still allows you to share photos via Facebook, while keeping you in control of your photos. THAT is a great place to be.

Basically, you’re limited to either print the photos (individually or in a fancy photo book) and then mail them or personally deliver them; or you can share the photos from your laptop or other mobile device on your next visit. While visiting with the folks and grandfolks is a good thing, it’s not always the most convenient due to geography and/or time. What other option is there to easily and privately share favorite family and event pics?

For Fotobounce users whose parents and grandparents have access to a computer, there’s the Fotobounce Viewer and there is Fotobounce Mobile. The Viewer is installed on their computer (either by you or by them – not difficult if they are comfortable with basic computer tasks). Installation takes only a few minutes. Once installed and with a username and password, they can access your photo library remotely and securely from their computer and the connection between the two computers is encrypted and protected from any other parties. All the while, the photos remain on your computer and under the control of Fotobounce. And don’t forget the Fotobounce Viewer also runs on Android phones and tablets and Apple devices, and prices of these devices continue to drop – making great gifts.

Fotobounce Mobile runs on any HTML5 browser – in other words, all of today’s modern browsers. This makes it possible to access your photos from newer Smart TV’s that offer a browser.

Because Fotobounce tags your photos using face recognition and offers lots of options to organize your photos into albums, your parents and grandparents are able to easily find pics by person or album. Of course, you determine which albums they are able to access as well.

Fotobounce also boosts your family photo-sharing efforts for moms, dads and grandparents without access to a computer. If you are using Fotobounce and have your people tagged, a quick sharing alternative is to load a photo frame with all the photos you would like to share. In this case, these photos would most likely include those that have your parents and/or grandparents in them. You can easily do this with Fotobounce by going to the People page, select the thumbnails of your parents and/or grandparents, click the camera icon and all photos containing any (or all) of them will be displayed in date order. You can select all photos and then export them to a photo frame. This would make a great birthday or anniversary present!

As you can see, Fotobounce is a great option to easily and privately share these favorite photos with those family members you treasure most. By doing so, you’ll play an active role in helping today’s generation enjoy these photos as well as assist in preserving your family’s pictorial history for generations to come.

Step 1

The first step is to pull together your digital photo and video files. If you are like most people, these files are probably not very well organized. This can make building the knowledge base of what you have and where it is located a daunting task. However, it will be time well spent as this represents the first step in the process toward claiming your title as “ruler” of your digital media.

Along with digital photos, you probably have hard copy photos. These may be stored in closets, loose in a box, or organized in photo albums. I would suggest that you scan these photos to convert them to a digital format. The benefits of digital are many, with easy sharing among friends and family and the ability to effortlessly make backup copies among two of the most significant. Scanning can be accomplished with inexpensive home scanners or you can send your photos to a third-party service provider.

It is not uncommon for your digital media to be spread across different types of physical media including VHS, 8mm, and CD to name a few. It is a good idea to buy a storage device and start pooling copies of the originals in one place. There are services that will convert older media types to current media. If you are technically savvy, you can take advantage of one of the many utilities available that will perform the job for you. The goal is to gather your new digital media pool onto one computer or storage device. If your computer does not have enough capacity, another option is to employ USB disk drives with 1 to 2 terabyte (TB) capacity (equal to 1,000 to 2,000 gigabytes). These are readily available for approximately $100 from online retailers.

Step 2

Once your digital photos and videos are all identified, scanned and assembled in one location, it’s time to select one digital format for photos and another for video. There are really two decisions to be made regarding the format of choice – the logical format and the physical format. The logical format chosen could, for example, be JPEG for digital photos and AVI for digital video. By standardizing the logical format you can also standardize the tools required for managing that media. The choice of logical format should be reviewed every five years or so to ensure that the format is still current and valid.

The physical format really comes down to two choices – hard drives or optical media. Magnetic media (such as digital cartridges or cassettes) for the consumer market has virtually disappeared as an option, which presents a classic example of the need to periodically migrate data from older physical media formats to newer formats. Optical media has a longer lifespan, but has much smaller storage capacities. Hard drives have large capacity, but because they contain moving parts, they are subject to mechanical failure over time. My recommendation is to use hard drives and back them up regularly to another local drive and to an offsite location.

Step 3

Once your media is determined, the next step is to apply some organization to the photos and video files. It’s not imperative that your photos be organized, although it makes finding specific photos for special events like a birthday, important anniversary, or even for a funeral presentation infinitely easier and less time-consuming.

My recommendation is to use a tool that applies face recognition technology to index photos (and video) by the people included in the photos/videos. It’s also helpful if the software enables you to organize by event, place and keywords, although the most useful index that you will use time and time again, is by person. Possible utilities you can use for this step include: Fotobounce, Picasa and iPhoto.

Step 4

It is important that you have reliable backups of your media. At a minimum, you want to ensure your photo/video library is able to survive the following possible events:

• Power failure – Power disruptions can cause corruption of data on hard disk storage devices. Battery backup devices are extremely affordable and help maintain clean and continuous power to your computer and storage units.
• Human error – Nobody’s perfect. This is particularly applicable when it comes to using computers. Human error accounts for a significant percentage of data loss. Because of this, it’s smart to have a second copy of your data at all times. Make copies of your data before and after major changes. If you can store everything on a 1 TB storage device, buy a second one and keep a backup copy on that device.
• Theft, Fire, or Flood – Natural disasters can also impact the integrity of your media files. To protect against these calamities, send a copy of your data to an offsite location. This can be at a friend’s home, a backup facility, or an Internet-based backup service. Many inexpensive services exist, especially affordable when you consider the value of your data. If you choose an Internet service, keep in mind that the initial backup may take awhile. But, subsequent backups are usually completed in significantly less time.

Step 5

As you add new photos and video, be sure to store them in your storage pool. Index the photos on a regular basis and make sure everything is backed up regularly as part of your digital photo/video preservation process.

By following these steps you can enjoy your digital family memories throughout your lifetime and for generations to come.

Author: Ray Ganong, President, Applied Recognition Inc.