Face recognition
I am really bad at remembering people’s faces. When I meet someone new, I can remember their hair, their birthday and other minute details about them, but it’s all for not because the next time I see them I will have no way of tying them to all that information. I have even gone so far as to introduce myself to the same person within 1 hour. The result is that I tend to ignore people or not introduce myself out of fear that I might have met them before and don’t recognize them.
Today, I came to a harsh realization. Computers are better at facial recognition than I am. Even a video game like the Kinect can identify people reliably enough to log them in based on it.
That was when I got a great, although pathetic idea. Mount a small camera to my person, say on my collar, connect it to a pocket computer, say an iPod Touch, and set it to continuously capture images and run facial recognition on them. Then I would place a bluetooth headset in my ear and when the iPod recognized someone I had met before, it would whisper their name and a fact about them into my ear.
