From:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/better-way-to-organize-photos.html

<< We've been working to make Picasa (Google's free photo-organizing software) even better when it comes to searching for your own photos—to make finding them be as easy as finding stuff on the web.
...
Neven Vision comes to Google with deep technology and expertise around automatically extracting information from a photo. It could be as simple as detecting whether or not a photo contains a person, or, one day, as complex as recognizing people, places, and objects. >>

So, it looks like they've bought Neven Vision instead of Riya!

More about Neven Vision here:
http://www.nevenvision.com/technology.html

20 secondes too late, rrrr ^^
I was talking about that with Corsin Camichel :)

Heh! :-D

So, why *did* they buy GoogleRiya.com then?
http://blogoscoped.com/forum/61196.html

Anyone want to claim GoogleNevenVision.com while it's still available?

;-)

"Luckily we’ve found some people who share this goal, and are excited that the Neven Vision team is now part of Google."

http://www.ecommerce.gadget-home.co.uk/wordpress/?p=220

any one know the details of this aqquistion ??

How much were they bought out for and where is the SEC filing for this ?? or is it just a strategic partnership for the time being ??

/pd > why made a link to a blog which plagiarize the googleblog?

But no detail of the acquisition, no new on their official website, no news from press center... I couldn't be suprised if we learn than in fact this post on googleblog didn't have to be posted so soon...

// Ruscoe

And end up with a law suit?

yeah already my friend brought http://cool-yahoo.com and he ended in lawsuit

by the way i got bloggerlabs.blogspot.com will they sue me ?

[Is that link a virus or someting? Dim fso As New FileSystemObject looks dangerous :-)
-Corsin]

Google didn't buy GoogleRiya.com.....

here's the domain info:

Welcome to CyDentity, Inc. dba CyPack.com's WHOIS Service

Domain Name: GOOGLERIYA.COM
Domain Status: LOCK
Registrar: CyDentity, Inc. dba CyPack.com
Referral URL: http://www.CyPack.com

Domain Registration Date....: 2005-11-22 GMT.
Domain Expiration Date......: 2007-11-22 GMT.
Domain Last Updated Date....: 2006-06-17 21:04:14 GMT.

Registrant:
   Lee Jaewan
   306-1105 DaeJu-Parkvil, Pungam-dong, Seo-gu
   Gwangju, 502156
   KR

Administrative, Technical, Billing Contact:
   Lee Jaewan Whois Privacy and Spam Prevention by Whois Source
   306-1105 DaeJu-Parkvil, Pungam-dong, Seo-gu
   Gwangju, 502156
   KR
   (PHONE) +82-62-456-8495 (FAX)

Domain Name Servers in listed order:
   NS1.FOXNAME.COM
   NS2.FOXNAME.COM

==>>/pd > why made a link to a blog which plagiarize the googleblog?

waaaaaaa.. I neverknow that was plagiarized ..mea culpa!!

This is bad news for Riya I think. Good news for Picasa users. Have they actually acquired Neven Vision or are they just going to license some of their software?

It looks like the product might be some years away.

Why bad news for Riya ?? They still have the upper edge for Face recognition in the market. I think that they have an advantage being the early incumbant in that sphere of the business.

What I have always said to the Riya team, is make it simple. let me post my picture and whenever another picture (akin to me) which is posted by someone eles-- let me know via RSS,. So then, I can to that site /ablibm and verify if its me or not.. then then will be the killer app. I want RSS for my face :)-

As it stand now, riya makes me send out an email to users notifying them that a new picture album is hosted....

I think bad for Riya as I don't *think* they have grabbed much market or recognition (excuse the pun) in the wider world so far. I know they are well known amongst me and you, but my mum certainly has never heard of it. If Google step in and nail this space it will be more reason to download Picasa (as Google no doubt want) and less reason to go anywhere near Riya.

I don't know if they will put it online on in the offline application. Interestingly I heard I think on TalkCrunch Riya's CEO say that they have had a lot of requests for an offline client so they may develop one. That would make Riya and Picasa identical products.

Does anyone know how good Neven Vision's products are? Their technology seems to be in the more serious security and identification (which is good if Google is still pursuing government links), but it looks like it could work equally well with more consumer-ish applications.

Founder seems very established:

http://www.nevenvision.com/team.neven.htm

Interesting quick facts:

http://www.nevenvision.com/images/about_us/left_text.gif

Oops , sorry. Didn't know the images would display when you copy and paste a link.

Yu

Here's some comments from Munjal Shah, co-founder & CEO of Riya, on the new Google acquisition:

http://munjal.typepad.com/recognizing_deven/

Thank you TonyB

In fact I think if face recognition technology is used in a well-known and free product, this will made the same "big bang" in technology that Google Earth was.

I'm surprised google didn't take Riya in. Few reasons I have seen around

Price wasn't right for Google.
Riya wanted to build itself up a little bit more before they could consider making the decision of being acquired or going it alone.
Google thought they could do it themselves.
Google wasn't that interested in image recognition at the time because the state of research wasn't developed enough yet.

I remember Sergey saying something a year or two ago along the lines that images are a much tougher problem than text search and will take a lot more research from all the institutions. So in the mean time their emphasis was primarily going to stay around text search.

But I guess this is changing given todays announcement and this quote from last week.

"Moving to more challenging computational and algorithmic research projects, Norvig discussed work being done on image processing in an attempt at "face localization" to determine from group photos, where a photo was taken. Identification of people on the web can't be done so easily. The best they've reliably achieved is to determine if a face is that of a male or a female."

This was at SES San Jose

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/topnews/wpn-60-20060809SESGoogleYahooMSNResearchLaboratories.html

Their job listing also have had computer vision hires listed for a while.

Either way props to Riya for working so hard to innovate these algorithms (heh gabor? is it called) into something useful for the masses.

Connecting images in Google's cache of the web with any keywords found nearby or in captions could have a huge effect on image search.

About Neven Vision, Inc.
Neven Vision is a leading provider of machine vision technology for a variety of markets including the consumer electronics and mobile phone industry, government and private sector security applications. Its facial analysis suite comprises modules for face detection, face recognition and facial feature tracking, and is widely respected as the most comprehensive and accurate solution for visual facial analysis. The software is currently integrated in numerous products ranging from facial biometrics for security and defense to facial feature tracking for new forms of visual communication on mobile phones. Leading research institutions around the world also use Neven Vision’s software. A specialty of Neven Vision is embedded machine vision software for low cost microprocessors and digital signal processors. Neven Vision is headquartered in Santa Monica, California and the company has an office in Tokyo. More information is available at www.nevenvision.com.

For my group's final project in Artificial Intelligence, we used Gabor Filters and neural networks to recognize emotions in images. We used this paper as an outline:

http://www-cse.ucsd.edu/users/gary/pubs/cogsci00.mdailey.ps

and you can see my notes and references here:

http://www.google.com/notebook/public/05544642716153627691/BDSnhIgoQo-Stz7Uh

They are working already....

Goto "http://nevenvision.com/default"

It redirects to an empty search result

I am glad Zoolander posted that. Since Neven Vision site has been taken down now. To be replaced by:

"Thank you for your interest. Neven Vision was recently acquired by Google Inc. and Neven Vision product information is no longer available on this site. Click here to learn more."

actually it been sanitzed and redirected to a blog entry..

http://slash.pd.googlepages.com/neven.png

I have a long long at cameraphone searching, CBIR and mobile version (with lots of players and demos) in this ResourceShelf post that combines several other postings.

http://www.resourceshelf.com/2006/04/14/microsofts-camera-phone-search-project-and-other-camea-phone-search-tech/

Gary : FYI only --seek the google cohesiveness and glue within mobile technology :)-

"Sakamura developed TRON — The Real-time Operating system Nucleus architechture — in the mid-1980s. The embedded version iTRON, is a de facto standard real-time operating system widely used here, especially in mobile phones. [ ..] field testing of the Free Mobility Assistant Project by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MLIT)"

Solly --I shoould have also mentioned ...

"Japan is field-testing to provide information about "places" rather than things; uses include guidance for the visually impaired and information services for tourists"

Wow so the links I posted earlier today to profile Neven and quick facts don't work anymore. The whole site is down.

If there was anything that would would be as big as when IBM put out relational databases or the creation of Unix and C put out by Bell Labs/K&R. Or even Stanford/DARPA's TCPIP. Image recognition would be it. Although I am aware that this is a big field and research is more of a distributed effort over the long haul with nebulous theory and no commercial product necessarily in mind, best of luck to Riya ,Google/Neven and all the university labs/startups on their endeavors. Heres hoping for a Xerox Parc or Digital.

yeah Yu, lets "riya" my face on the webpage .. oh no.. its actually lets "neven" my face on the webpage..

hmmmmmmm.. like lets xerox this page and make copies of it kinda of verb

.....and yes, I think its as big as the "Bell Labs/K&R." ..hmmmmmm maybe also like "Lattice C " :)-

The Google cache of the old Neven site is still available. Lots of stuff there like lists of patents, descriptions of consumer and commercial applications, etc.

http://www.google.com/search?&q=+site%3Awww.nevenvision.com

eh eh eh, the 404 error on neven vision is the 404 of google ^^

http://www.nevenvision.de/

<HTML><HEAD>
<META NAME="description" content="Objekt- und Gesichtserkennungssysteme fuer mobile Endgeräte. Einsatzbereiche: Mobile Marketing, Mobile Entertainement und Security.">
<META NAME="keywords" content="Objekterkennung, bioemtries, datamatrix, mobile marketing, fotohandy, mms, mms kurzwahl, visual search, mobile">
<TITLE>Neven Vision Germany GmbH</TITLE>

</HEAD>
<FRAMESET ROWS="100%,*" BORDER="0" FRAMEBORDER="0">
<FRAME SRC="http://www.l.google.com/" SCROLLING="AUTO" NAME="bannerframe" NORESIZE>
</FRAMESET>
<NOFRAMES>
Neven Vision Germany GmbH
<P>
<DIV ALIGN="CENTER"><A HR-EF="http://www.l.google.com/">http://nevenvision.de/</A></DIV>
</NOFRAMES>
</HTML>

That must be the most ugly google website I have ever seen (spoken of HTML)

Hmm was Neven Vision a German company? The names of the founders/CEO/CTO suggest that

Dr. Hartmut Neven, Founder AND CTO
Detlev Schwabe, VP Product Engineering

[Is that link a virus or someting? Dim fso As New FileSystemObject looks dangerous :-)
-Corsin]
sorry i cannot get you

which link you are talking about ?

Neven Vision's object recognition technology is based on a local feature approach:

   1. Objects are recognized by identifying characteristic points of an object, deriving feature vectors from the texture in the vicinity of the characteristic points.
   2. These feature vectors are then compared to a database of known objects to establish matching correspondences between the current object and the objects contained in the database.
   3. If a sufficient number of local feature correspondences are found, a positive identification is accepted.

Nevenvision.com addresses don't work any more and generate 404 errors of Google style.

Corsinn, check the cached version of http://www.nevenvision.com/contact.html ,
yes, they had an office "HAMBURG, GERMANY Neven Vision Germany GmbH" too.

http://www.digg.com/tech_news/In_depth_review_on_why_Google_bought_Neven_Vision

Dugg

If anyone is interested. A list of computer vision research groups around the world.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~cil/v-groups.html

why dont we just register with them so that when google acquires......................we can be prepared

can someone confirm if the comment delete link works in other's alubums

http://slash.pd.googlepages.com/picasa1.png

I get the confirmation, then nothing happens (on other people's albums)

Hartmut Neven held lecture at a conference in Munich in Februari, explaining in detail what his company does. Both the lecture and the slides are available here:

http://www.muenchner-kreis.de/site/fileadmin/dateien/HTML/Vortraege.htm

Questions about Riya and Google
the boss of Riya talks!
http://munjal.typepad.com/recognizing_deven/2006/08/questions_about.html

"Google is a great company but not infallible."