geekEleet

Google seems to be doing a very good job at making the tech headlines these days.  I suspect it has something to do with the way they are propelling technology forward at lightning speeds.  Enter their newest addition to the already popular Picasa photo sharing website - Picasa Web Albums.  Name tagging.

Name tagging, which is set to launch at noon today (PST), is a new feature for Picasa that allows users to put a name to a face.  “That’s not new though, all the other photo sites allow tagging”, you say.  Yes, that is correct, but do they also present a collection of photos that have been deemed to resemble the person in your photos so that you can properly name them?  I think not.  This new revamped Picasa site offers a state-of-the-art facial recognition technology that will push this service ahead of the market. 

Facial recognition technologies have been gaining speed for the past few years, however a commercially viable and inexpensive offering has not yet made it to market.  The technology launching later today from Google was added to their arsenal with the acquisition of Neven Vision in 2006.

Expecting to capitalize on the addition and compulsion trends of typical web users, Google expects that the new Picasa will have tremendous growth.  I personally suspect that in the first few days the web of name tags will grow exponentially.  Tagging is already popular among many web technologies, and pictures are no exception.  The biggest problem with tagging today is that it’s a chore.  The process is quite manual and many users can’t be bothered.  That is all about to change.  Picasa’s name tag feature throws enough automation at the process, that a whole new subset of taggers are likely to emerge.

Google’s Picasa still has a long way to go if they want to compete with the likes of Yahoo’s Flickr or Fox Interactive’s Photobucket.  The revamp launching today is certainly a step in the right direction.  Sadly, Google’s Photos Blog has not been updated with the details of this latest upgrade.