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Google Receives Patent for Facial Recognition To Unlock Phone

posted on September 5, 2012

Let’s keep this short because all this is is another in the long line of patent announcements that are making people wonder if patents are simply a way to hinder progress rather than promote innovation.

Google has been awarded the patent for a face-to-unlock feature on a smartphone. cnet reports

The search giant yesterday was awarded a patent, called “Login to a computing device based on facial recognition,” that describes a technology for identifying a person’s face and delivering to that person full access to personal information on a device.

In order for the technology to work, Google’s patent requires a camera that can identify a person’s face. If that face matches a “predetermined identity,” then the person is logged into the respective device.

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Social Media and the Fortune 500

posted on September 5, 2012

Last week, the University of Massachuestts Dartmouth released a study about the use of social media by the Fortune 500.

These research efforts are fun to examine and try to poke holes in as it always looks like the Fortune 500 doesn’t ‘get it’. That may be true in some cases but it’s not a fair assessment across the board. There are some Fortune 500 companies that are running with social media like Coca Cola and their 50 million likes on Facebook.

Let’s take a look at some of the results from this study. First, blogging (and yes blogs should be considered part of the social media landscape, if you believe otherwise please explain in the comments).

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Majority of Consumers Would Trade a Facebook Like for a Discount

posted on September 4, 2012

Speaking of Facebook likes. . . it’s National Coupon Month and RedPlum has just released the results of their annual Purse String Study. The overwhelming conclusion? People are so used to looking for deals and coupons, it’s “become second nature to them.” But instead of just heading to the newspaper for circulars and inserts, they’re using the internet to save more money and save time.

Here’s the best news for ecommerce folks:

Look at that happy orange strip; 67% of consumers said they’d like a page on Facebook in return for a 25% discount. That’s huge and way more than I would have said if you asked me (which nobody did.) With all the grumbling people do about Facebook, here they are willing to sell their soul vote of confidence in order to save money.

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Excuse Me, Klout. I’m Having a Moment

posted on September 4, 2012

Last month, Klout pulled the wraps off a new design and new backend that is supposed to be more transparent and more accurate. I just got the email.

I’ll be upfront here and say, I’m not a big Klout user, so I can’t really remember what the site used to look like. But I think it’s now cleaner and more colorful and everything is bigger but not necessarily clearer in the non-visual sense of the word.

The crux of the redesign is the Moment, as in “We’re having a. . . ”

This is not my page. Since my page was full of pictures of other people, I decided to go with the example Klout published. (But consider this fair warning to anyone who follows me on social media, you could show up in a post one day.)

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Coca-Cola Hits 50 Million Facebook Likes

posted on September 4, 2012

Normally I would let a press release like this one go but in the light of a slow news day and our earlier post regarding Facebook’s dislike of fake likes this seemed interesting.

First, in the name of full disclosure I am a total Coca-Cola fanboy. This is the one brand that has struck me as attractive since I was knee-high to a Coke can. It’s not anything that has any particular story to it either. I think most people have brand ‘relationships’ that make no common sense to others and it should just be left at that.

So when I read that Coca-Cola hit 50 million likes on their Facebook page I was interested. The press release reads

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Fake Likes Not Liked by Facebook

posted on September 4, 2012

Facebook is trying to purify its name in terms of what a ‘like’ means. It is a form of currency that one could argue rivals that of how important it is to Google for search results to not be gamed. Considering how Facebook and value these days haven’t exactly been walking hand in hand (have you seen their stock price lately?) it looks as if the company is trying to at least maintain the integrity of its product with a war being waged on fake likes.

From Facebook itself we hear