Apple, Sony ang Google make your life easier

It might sound a bit strange, the combination of Sony, Apple and Google but together they are doing some nice stuff on (geo)tracking. So far these are seperate applications but it gives a clear direction for the next few years on what to expect.

Google obviously is known for search but also for their maps and what you can do with it. Well Sony now jumps into this with GPS tracking on their latest HD videocameras (the option was alreay available on their photo cameras as a seperate add on). This means you can easily track your complete vacation in picture and video (HD) on Google maps (pretty cool on your multi touch dining table, both for preparing the trip as well as showing it to others afterwards but how to navigate easily though this on a TV with the 10 foot experience .............. suggestions, please let me know))

Now Apple comes in with their iPhoto version 8.0. This has face identification and recognition and it goes pretty far. if for example you notice it's not seeing someone's head, you can right click and ask it to "Detect Missing Faces."

It goes back to the picture and guesses at new potential faces. The upside is, it will probably see the face you want it to see, without you manually marking it. The downside is, it may well see faces where there are none. I tried it, and it worked, but it doesn't make the facial recognition smarter, just

less discriminating.

If you use the "Add Missing Face" feature to manually draw a box around a known face, this new software will actually also search that box to see if it can identify the face. This has not immediate impact on your life, but it means that if iPhoto does see a face there, where it didn't before, it will "count" it when doing facial recognition stuff.

When you are using Faces to name people, it now pulls names from your Address Book. This means, when you start to type in a name, you immediately get choices. If you don't like all your friends being so formally listed with first and last name, you can change the tag globally very easily later, on the Faces corkboard home screen.

Another very helpful improvement in Faces is the ability to name other people when confirming shots of a particular individual. Like, say you have a bunch of shots of yourself—if you know a shot isn't you, you right click that shot and choose "Name," then add in whoever that person's name is. It's helpful because before, the choice was either "Yes, this is me" or "No, this is not me."