Facial recognition

Our reporter Steve Szucs and his recognition program results

What a job. Everyday I go to work with the likes of Harrison Ford, Val Kilmer, and Bette Midler. Kind of.

On myheritage.com, you can scan in your face or the face of your friends – or co-workers – and its facial recognition program will tell you which stars you resemble.

It’s pretty cool but I have to differ with a few of the outcomes.

Our managing editor, Patti Ewald, has always looked a bit like Candice Bergen during her Murphy Brown era. But Candice didn’t show up as even one of her dozen or so matches. According to myheritage.com, her facial features have more in common with Mandy Moore. I think the problem is the software doesn’t know that Patti IS Murphy Brown -- and she also just happens to look like Candice Bergen.

Yep, I’m dating myself in a huge way … I know that. I promise I won’t go into the sociological significance of Alf and how the sitcom relates to the post-modern societal norm. I have no idea what the last part means but it sounds like a great title for a doctoral thesis.

So for all of you that know who don’t know Murphy Brown. I ran a facial recognition for our court reporter Brad Dicken. We always saw a faint, a very faint resemblance to Harrison Ford. Did the program? Nope, it saw him more as a Robert Patrick. He is the guy who played the liquid metal terminator character in Terminator 2.

Saving the best for last, our newsroom buddy and all-around good guy Steve Szucs has a cherubic mug that always kind of reminded us of Opie from the Andy Griffith Show. Well, the site seems to think he looks like some guy named Christiano Renaldo. His number three match was Bette Midler. I’m not sure where that comes from but hey, it’s a great chance to rib him about his feminine qualities.

Wondering who you look like? Try it out. It’s really simple and really fast. I ran photos of several co-workers in less than 30 minutes.

Free Ringtones

Ringtones are fun; ringtones are cool; ringtones are expensive.

Well, two out of three are true. Ringtones have traditionally been a pain to obtain, they are expensive and there are a ton of sites that rope you in with promises of free tones and you end up on something harder to get out of than a book-of-the-month club.

Now there is a new site that the New York Times Web site accurately calls the youtube of Web sites. Free tones, free wallpapers, free videos. The site encourages you to upload content that you create yourself. One feature that may prove to be a problem down the road is 20 second mp3 clips of copyrighted music. A quick search shows songs by Timbaland, the weird Numa-Numa song, Chamillionaire, even mother of the year Britney Spears.

Backed by John Ferber a multimillionaire who hit the jackpot when he sold advertising.com to Time Warner AOL for $72 million, this site stands a chance of being around for a while.

So if you aren’t ready to check it out yet here are a couple more features. Why download somebody else belting out the hits when you can do it yourself? You can create clips by calling in on your own phone and recording one. Another option allows you to use a text to speech editor. I have to admit the last one isn’t a big seller for me.

I signed up for the site and picked a song to download. They gave me the address to my download area and after a few minutes of clicking around I made it to the download area and downloaded the new ringtone. There are the usual warnings that you should check your plan and understand the standard text messaging and data rates apply. In this new world of powerful data driven cell phones you really want to have a plan that lets you use some data.