Photo opportunities

Amid the ongoing file transfer from Toni (the Sony) to Moses (the Tablet), the decision re how many of the photo files to transfer is a difficult one - how much weeding out needs to be done? Do I keep all the shots? Only the ones I really like? Drop the file size on the ones I'm keeping just because I can't decide to throw them out? Or just trash the lot because I'm fairly sure I have them all backed up on disc anyway?
In the big wide world, there are some very exciting things happening with images - Riya, one of the online photo services has developed software that can automatically recognize who is in a picture and tag it with their names. Currently in alpha testing, the software has proven sensitive enough to tell the difference between twins and recognize members of the same family. It can even read street signs for clues about a picture's location.
The aim? To make every photo in the world something you can find. Which is a pretty amazing thing - especially as it seems that most people are the same as me and find it just a bit tedious to assign names to thousands of photos. And as more and more digital cameras are sold, and the bigger media storage cards get, the more unnamed photos there are going to be sitting on computers all over the world. Riya estimates there are 280 billion images on desktop computers already.
Sharing them around though might raise a few privacy concerns - especially as identifying a person in a photo means their name and email address have to be entered. The service then alerts the person that they've been tagged. The report I read didn't say if the person could choose to be de-tagged. But it does suggest ongoing privacy concerns especially in a world where Google and other search engines can find everyone's name, e-mail address and much more.
For more on this, visit the Wired story