Comments on: Memory lane redesigned by Haussmann (or, the mechanization of Samuel Pepys)

By: Andrew Barer

Andrew Barer — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 15:07:29 +0000

I found this fascinating.
I am starting a company based on the power of adding sound to images for the purpose of helping people tell stories and preserve memories. I’d be happy to share my business plan. Our demo site is http://www.talkingpix.com.

I’d be happy to give anyone who contacts me (abarer@voice-express.com) a coupon for a free talking photo card and shipping — all I ask is some feedback.

Thanks,

Andrew

By: nelson

nelson — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 23:18:47 +0000

sorry, here’s the link:

http://www.myheritage.com/FP/Company/face-recognition.php

By: nelson

nelson — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 23:17:07 +0000

Hi Grant: Great post. I came across this webiste. They apply face-recognition technology to family photos. You create an account and upload some photos with the proper identification. After these initial photos, the software automatically detects faces in the following uploaded photos, saving the effort needed to mark faces manually. They claim it can be taught to associate faces with names and family trees. I haven’t tested it myself but I think it’ll be a great help to answer “Who?”. Check it out.

By: DC1974

DC1974 — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 19:35:45 +0000

At my grandmother’s funeral recently, we had all the photo albums that my grandfather (who passed several years before) on hand. My grandfather was obsessively organized. Each photo album was broken down into 10 year spans, and each photo was labeled with “who” and “when” and “where.” It was a fantastic process for all of us to look through those albums. My grandfather wasn’t particularly sentimental, though, so there was no cataloguing of “why.” The photo captions had all the emotion of a booking photo. I found this fascinating in someways. I also found it fascinating about what my grandfather had thought to keep. He had spent his entire working life in sales for Pontiac Motors, so in addition to the photos of family there were also photos of the things like the parts room in a Pontiac dealership in Duluth, MN. If I ever go back and get my MA, I think I’d most like to study some form of visual anthropology. I think that not only the way that we frame our subjects, but also the subjects we choose to frame says enormous amounts about our individual and social cultures. Our photographic history is as important as an oral or written history for understanding our ways of seeing.

By: jens

jens — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 04:33:07 +0000

Max Frisch: “Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that man doesn’t have to experience it.”

By: steve

steve — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 23:17:06 +0000

When I think of the vast pile of my late father’s Kodak slides…sitting in various storage boxes and carousels, probably never to be looked at. It’s kind of sad.

By: Sam Felder

Sam Felder — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 19:19:08 +0000

flickr and other services like this already offer what you are talking about. I use flickr to catalog almost all of my photos. I geotag and share them publicly and privately with my friends and family. So long as Yahoo’s data center is around this material is available. Moreover, I allow anyone who can look at one of my photos to order a print. This further increases the life of that image.