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Facebook Auto-Tagging of Photos – EU Probes Facial Recognition Feature

By
Tekedia Editors
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0

Facebook has begun auto-tagging  of photos so that users do not have to manually select their friends when they upload photos for tagging. As soon as you post the photos, Facebook will automatically know them and immediately tag them accordingly.

 

Every day, people add more than 100 million tags to photos on Facebook. They do it because it’s an easy way to share photos and memories. Unlike photos that get forgotten in a camera or an unshared album, tagged photos help you and your friends relive everything from that life-altering skydiving trip to a birthday dinner where the laughter never stopped. Tags make photos one of the most popular features on Facebook.

 

The goal is that as more users easily tag people, the level of activity in the site will increase. Easy tagging, more photo sharing!

 

In the same vein, European Union regulators said they will investigate the facial recognition technology which Facebook employs to do this auto-tagging and other products in the site. They maintained that users are not asked for permission before they are lumped into the technology.

 

A U.S. privacy group has also asked the United States Federal Trade Commission to investigate the matter as well.

 

What happens is that when users upload photos, Facebook technology, Tag Suggestions, automatically analyzes the photo database and then suggest names for the tagging of the photos. The regulators are insisting that Facebook must seek for prior consent while Facebook noted that anyone can easily opt out.

 

Facebook is a behemoth where 100 million tags are done daily.

 

Analyses

The use of facial recognition technology has been employed in different fields, including security and policing. Facebook is just bringing this to the social media network. Facebook perhaps could be using the iris recognition and the prior names people have given for each person in their database to do this.

 

It is harmless simply on the bases that anyone posting anything online should not have any illusion of privacy. The regulators can do what they want as they need to justify their jobs, but the people using Facebook may not really care for the efforts they are putting.  Technology should not be trumped on the altar of privacy and in this case, this technology can even help law enforcement. Just get a photo of a criminal, put it in Facebook and it could help you develop a footprint especially if the person is working with different names.

 

Our world is such that anything you do outside your home could appear online – it could be satellite images of Google trying to map the world or a neighbor filming  you. All we need to do is simple: do not do anything that seeing online will embarrass you because the world of privacy has since gone.

 

In most parts of the world, there is no information that a simple googling cannot reveal about people. Someone can easily find out your home address, your income level, your phone number, your age, just by knowing your name. It is a new world and Facebook is just participating in this social redesign.

 

 

You May Need This Free Event – DDS in a Nutshell: Software Architecture for Scalable Integration

By
Tekedia Editors
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0

 

Data Distribution Service (DDS) is an industry-standard publish-subscribe data bus that can be distributed logically or physically across local processor cores, backplane buses, or networks, making it well suited for today’s multicore, bladed, and/or cloud computing platform solutions. DDS also provides network interoperability, code portability, and increased system capability while decreasing hardware requirements and lifecycle costs.

Is it a good fit for your application? Join us as Real-Time Innovations (RTI) presents a technical overview of DDS and how it can be used in various distributed messaging and database environments. RTI will also show how DDS provides lower overhead and higher availability for distributed applications.

 

Speaker:
Rick Warren- Director of Technology Solutions at Real-Time Innovations (RTI)

 

Moderator:
Chris Ciufo- Editorial Director- OpenSystems Media

 

June 14, 2011 7:00 PM Lagos Time


Go here and register

 

We think that this event will help people in Africa that are looking at implementing DDS especially when they are working to understand the interface between the hardware and software issues associated with this technology. DDS has become popular and it will surely be useful if we begin to understand how it can be used across platforms, more efficiently. As  Real-time Systems, DDS has evolved to become a specification of a publish/subscribe middleware for distributed systems created in response to the need to standardize a data-centric publish-subscribe programming model. Of course, it may take a while to get there, but this has an opportunity. If you can make this free online event, attend it.

Nigeria Software Industry Worth $6 Billion, Says DG of National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA)

By
Tekedia Editors
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1

Vanguard reports that Prof. Cleopas Angaye, Director-General of National Information Technology Development Agency ( NITDA) has said that the Nigerian software industry has potentials worth $6bn (N900 billion).

“The Nigerian software industry is potentially a six-billion-dollars industry and can surpass the contributions from the oil industry, especially as the software industry is not a capital intensive sector.

“In addition, the internet has created a level playing field for software developers all around the world; proximity and flexibility would, therefore, favour our indigenous developers for local, regional and international markets.

“The foregoing, therefore, lay credence to the fact that there is an urgent need to develop appropriate policy to guide software Nigeria,” he said.

The statement made by the DG is not wrong. There is no ceiling on what the technology capacity of any nation can be. $6b is not really a big number for a nation like Nigeria considering that we are about 1/5th of Africa’s population. Some of the iconic software companies make that every quarter and to argue that software industry of the biggest black nation should be less than a quarter revenue of big US software company is not wise.

The main challenge for NITDA and the professor is to make the realization come through. The country is not working hard enough. The government is not even supporting the local software makers. The legal frameworks that will sustain the sofTware industry remains very weak. So, how can the nation make that happen.

Tekedia thinks that the country must evolve beyond making commentaries to actually doing things. We need to have a strategic plan to make Nigeria to progress in sync. Lagos gets it, Maiduguri is far behind. Owerri gets it, Opopo may not. There are huge disparities in the ways governments executes our strategies.

This is what we recommend

Government must introduce a true and visible local content requirement in the banking industry. They remain the biggest consumer of software in the nation. What the banks spend on software accounts for more than 87% of the total software bill in the nation. To avoid any shock, a five year window can be put in place to make sure than all software used in the banking industry is made in Nigeria.

If Oracle, Sybase, Microsoft and others must sell to our banks, they must be required to make those software in the nation or at least have a creative lab built in the country. That way the assessment that the DG made could hold water.

As Nigeria hovers above the $250b GDP, a $6b value of the software industry is too low. That means, it is less than 3% of the GDP. We need to jack it up to 6% in the next five years. That way we can begin the discussion that we are diversifying away from the minerals. Right now, it may not even be up to 0.2% of the GDP.

Nigeria FIIRO Develops New Technologies. Yet, They Must Modernize Their Processes

By
Tekedia Editors
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2

FIIRO – Federal Institute of Industrial Research, Oshodi Nigeria has some technologies they want to to commercialize and they are looking for partners. In her over forty years of existence, the Institute has made some modest, but notable technological breakthroughs and innovations. Following  are some of the technologies the government agency has developed and looking for commercial partners to take them to the market.

Information gathered from Tekedia indicates the agency is also interested in cost and profit sharing. So, if you are interested in any of these ideas, you can talk to them at  FIIRO.


Instant Pounded Yam Flour Production

Cassava-Wheat Flour Composite Bread Production

Cassava-Wheat Snacks

Cassava Processing

Cassava Chips

Cassava Pellets

Production Of Fufu

Cassava Starch

Cassava Flour

Mushroom Production

Essential Oils

Production Of Fruit Juices

Palmwine Bottling And Preservation

 

Analysis

Tekedia thinks that FIIRO is making remarkable efforts in developing capacity in indigenous products. Looking at their focus, it is evident that they are looking at ways to solve the immediate problems in the nation with regards to food and its preservation. Yet, we want to challenge them to move upper in the technology pyramid to find better ways and values in realizing their objectives.

 

While cassava could be processed in the ways they have described, it is also possible that they can develop some electronic automation to make this affordable. Mechanical systems and some times technologies that depend largely on weather could be expensive for SMEs to buy. Weather changes could be a problem. And mechanical systems generally require a lot of investment.

 

So FIIRO while commending your works, we ask you to bring electronic automation in this business.

 

What is FIIRO?

The conception of the Institute was in 1953, when the Word Bank sent an economic mission to Nigeria. One of the Missions’ observations was that industrial research in Nigeria was diffused, uncoordinated, and with no definite direction. Consequently, the mission recommended that an “Institute of Applied Technical Research” be set up. It was inaugurated in 1956 by the then Minister for Commerce and Industry. In February 1958, the name was changed to “Federal Institute of Industrial Research.”


Originally, its supervising Ministry was Federal Ministry of Commerce and Industry, but since then, it has come under different supervising bodies, the current one being the Federal Ministry of Science and technology, since 1992.
At first, it had a succession of expatriates as its Directors and Chief Executives. However, it had, from 1970 to 1977, its first indigenous Director in the person of Dr. Isaac Adedayo Akinrele. He was succeeded in 1977, by Dr. Olajide Adedokun Koleoso, who left the stage in 1990 for Professor Sunday Ayodele Odunfa. Dr. Oluwole Olatunji, the incumbent Director-General/Chief Executive, took over from Professor Odunfa in the year 2000.

Innovation Management Is A Hot Area – Stolto Consulting Leads The Way

By
Tekedia Editors
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0

Stolto Consulting is a new management consulting company in Lagos. They offer advisory and consulting services to customers.  They focus largely on Innovation Management. They believe that in today’s world, innovation isn’t a luxury, it is indeed a necessity. From their website, they pitched the focus as follows:

 

 

  • creating and delivering new growth opportunities for our clients
  • help build extraordinarily successful and sustainable institutions/enterprises whether new or existing
  • commitment to providing unique services without limiting the solutions we offer to the conventional

 

Yes, innovation is the primary driver of financial, organizational and economic growth. At Stolto, they work with clients to develop a culture of Innovation in their processes and products.  For them, innovation is indeed  the forte.

 

Contact:

Investment House
6th Floor, Rear Wing
21/25 Broad Street
Lagos, Nigeria

Telephone Nos: 08191338475
07033990635,
08060544927
Email: info@stoltoconsulting.com

 

Innovation will remain a key driver in national competitiveness. It is what separates iconic brands from others. Having an innovation culture is strategic for organizational growth and survival.

 

So, we think that Stolto has a lot to deliver to the nation in this area that has not received enough focus. By helping people improve their processes, tools and systems, they could become more efficient in their businesses. We hope Stolto will take the nation to that level.

 

Small and large companies must pursue innovation and it gets very exciting that a consulting company in Lagos has expertise in that area. Innovation is the future and helping your firm to master that process will reward all your stakeholders.

 

We welcome this new firm and wish them success as they pursue that mission of helping more companies redesign and become innovation powerhouses for the competitiveness of Nigeria. We must be innovation obsessed in Nigeria and become living agents of kaizen where we must continuously improve in all we do.

 

 

 

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