Google Analyzes Your Vacation Snaps to Figure Out Where You Were
June 23rd, 2009Via: Popular Science:
Where were we when this was taken? Do you remember, dear?
Tired of trying to identify landmarks in your endless folders of travel photos? Google’s image recognition engine could help. Just upload the mystery image to an online album, point the engine at it, and zap — turns out it was the Acropolis, in Athens, Greece.
There’s no product just yet, but Google’s recognition engine has proven capable of identifying more than 50,000 unique landmarks from around the world, and all “without any human intervention,” said Jay Yagnik, head of Google’s Computer Vision Research. His team is scheduled to present its work today at a computer vision conference in Miami, Florida.
The recognition engine automatically pinpointed unique landmarks by sifting through 42 million images from photo-sharing websites Picasa and Panoramio, as well as online travel guides. Visual algorithms compared and filtered landmark images taken from different angles and under many lighting conditions.
So, people need computer assistance to remember where their pictures where taken. Maybe they should pay more attention to the place when they’re actually there.
I rarely take pictures on vacations. I prefer seeing things when I’m there, rather than after I’m back home.