New features

Tara says that they’re getting ready to roll out some cool new features.  The main release is a new Riya Uploader tool with bugfixes and an auto-update feature to make sure you always have the latest version of the software.  They also need help with the facial-recognition algorithms, so they’re asking for people with more than 1000 photos to help test.  In return, they’ll pay you on a ascending scale or give you a new digital camera, whichever you prefer.  I wish I had access to all my photos, because I’d upload all of them just to get a new camera.  As it stands, I’ve only got access to about 500 of my photos, at least until I can get the rest of them off of the hard drive they’re currently stored on.  Oh, and you also need to be able to provide all the photos on a DVD and tag them correctly.

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.