In The TechCrunch Kitchen

Enric sent me a link to a great little film clip that he cobbled together from footage taken at the TechCrunch meetup, where Riya was officially launched.  It’s got a veritable who’s who of the internet community featured, and you learn some really cool background info on the Riya concept and how some of it is going to work in the future.  Highly recommended for anyone who might be interested in delving more into the Riya background/technical aspect of things.  Also a brilliant idea from Robert Scoble that SOMEONE is going to capitalize on sooner rather than later.

I’m getting ready to upload about 300 more photos, mostly of people I don’t even know.  They’re from my Advanced Individual Training when I first joined the Army; the course was sixteen weeks long and only took place three years ago, but I can’t for the life of me remember most of their names.  I’m hoping that others in Riya will eventually tag photos of these people and attach the same email address that I have for them, which means I’ll be able to see their names.  I never thought about it before, but I suppose this could be a pretty cool function of Riya in the future.

Unrecognized

Finally got the uploader to work today, and uploaded about twenty more photos.  I wanted to test the system a bit, so I uploaded ten pictures of people that I’d already tagged and identified and ten pictures of people who were unknown.  I ended up with eleven pictures of people that Riya identified somehow, so I went in to check and see who had been mis-tagged.  Sure enough, a picture of my girlfriend’s sister had been tagged with my girlfriend’s name.  Does this mean that Riya will have a tough time telling the difference between family members?  I doubt it — I put up bunches of pictures of myself and my sisters and it was able to tell the difference between them every time.  This might have been a strange occurence, and a singular one at that.

Tara  has a post up asking for more ideas for the photosearch, so here’s your chance to get your voice heard!  Is there anything that YOU would personally like to see in a photosearch?  I like the idea of a location-based search, like finding all photos that were taken at a particular place I’m planning on taking a vacation to, or things like that, but it seems like Tara already has that idea nailed down.

Riya Conversations

I got an email from Tara Hunt, the superbly great “mischief marketer” from Riya.  Tara said she’s crossing her fingers for the alpha invites to go out on Monday, so if you’re on the list you should get your invite.  Personally, I can’t wait!  Danny Yang (also of Riya) also wrote me to tell me they’ll be launching shortly, so stay tuned.

Enric from Tech Alley sent me the link to a video he shot at the TechCrunch meetup/Riya Launch Party in which Tara gives a demonstration of the software.  I gotta admit, it looks pretty freaking cool in action; all I’d seen up to this point was screenshots, but now that I’ve seen it in action I’m even more impressed.