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| Photo by Jay DeFoore |
| Click photo to see more shots from the Kodak booth at CES 2007. |
LAS VEGAS--Kodak's official product announcements during the 40th annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week were two stylish compact cameras and a new line of widescreen digital frames (more on those here and here), but the company also has a slew of new technologies coming in the near future.
Kodak engineers are cooking up several technologies that, although they aren’t quite ready yet, should offer a boost to the company’s online photo service and make it easier to enjoy photos after they’ve been taken.
In a nod to the emerging cell phone market, Kodak in 2007 will be rolling out facial recognition software and wireless transfer of photos from Bluetooth-enabled cell phones.
The software will streamline the process of transferring cell phone images to the PC and then uploading them to the Internet. The software will reside in a USB dongle that plugs into a user’s computer. Pre-authorized transfer of new cell phone pictures will begin automatically when the user enters the house or within Bluetooth range.
Custom settings will allow you to erase photos from the cell phone once they’ve been transferred or keep them on the device’s memory card for later use.
Supporting cell phone carriers have not yet been worked out, and pricing and availability is not yet set. But check back with us in the coming weeks for more information.
Another emerging technology from Kodak still a ways away is a facial recognition feature designed for use with the New York-based company’s EasyShare Gallery. This feature will allow users to set up searches for individuals that have been detected by the facial recognition algorithms. The software searches and indexes all the photos matching those facial characteristics, allowing you to create slideshows and group photos by their content.
Kodak says the technology will be designed to recognize faces even as they age. (But will it be able to differentiate between identical twins?)
One application for such a feature, should the user have one of Kodak’s WiFi-enabled digital LCD picture frames (just announced here), would be to create custom slideshows of photos of the grandparents just before a visit.
The last emerging technology Kodak showed also uses facial recognition algorithms. The upcoming Kodak Picture Movie DVD will allow you to plug in a memory card, USB device, or CD/DVD with photos into one of the company’s retail kiosks, which can be found at Best Buy stores or popular drug stores. Users can then create customized DVD “movies” – essentially comprised of still photos set to the “Ken Burns” effect -- with a number of licensed popular songs as the backing track. (The disco hit “That’s the Way I Like It” by KC and the Sunshine Band is one option for background music in the “Energetic” category.)
The facial detection technology comes into play during the slideshow’s panning and zooming effects, which ensures that individuals captured in the pictures get their close-up moments.
One Kodak rep we spoke with said typical DVDs would take about 12 minutes to burn onto disk.
None of the above mentioned technologies are in full use yet, but stay tuned to PopPhoto.com for more information on these and other consumer electronics trends.
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