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.

Riya’s Worth

I’ve been doing some thinking about what a service like Riya could potentially be worth to companies like Google, Yahoo or even Microsoft.  Most of us have heard the rumors that Google is offering to buy out Riya for $40 million, and that seems like an astronomical number.  It’s just a rumor, of course, so please don’t take my words as anything but that.  If you stop and think about it, though, you start to realize that to someone like Microsoft, Riya could be worth a whole lot more.  The possibilities of including Riya’s technology in Windows Vista boggles the mind; can you imagine having facial recognition software right out of the box?  I’d wager that the real price of Riya, if they do sell the property eventually, will be somewhere above $200 million, and that’s a bare minimum.  We could see a bidding war escalate, especially if Google decides that THEY would like to include something like Riya in this oft-rumored web-based OS they’re supposedly buildilng.

Thank you to all the folks from Riya who’ve linked me from the official Riya blog and your personal blogs.  I hope it comes through that I’m a geniune fan and can’t wait to try this software out!

Riya Alpha nearing ready state

In checking up on the various Riya employee blogs, it looks as though the next wave of alpha testing is about to begin.  Ojos (the company developing Riya) had planned on sending out invites to 1,000 testers (myself included) on November 23, but are still working out a few kinks and bugs in the system before passing it on to the public.  The team even worked through the Thanksgiving holiday, which shows enormous dedication and belief in the product they’re creating.

I’m eagerly anticipating the release of Riya, and I haven’t even tried it out yet.  I’ve always wanted to see what facial recognition software could do, and the fact that they are releasing it to the masses for free is both astonishing and highly effective.  If the software works as planned, then Riya will have no problem owning the photo search market — especially if they can get to it play well with Flickr.