I was at a community function last week and was introduced to a cool idea for event promotion using a technology called Vividot®. I felt a little bad as the founder of the company that created this technology, John Wechsler, serves on the board with me at a local non-profit. And I didn't have the slightest clue what it was all about...
I had a chance to see the technology in action and experience it first-hand that night. It's a pretty amazing concept. We've all been to those company conventions or community gatherings and been given the obligatory sticker name badge. We've all also been to these same functions and seen some shutterbug running around with a camera taking all sorts of photos. But do you ever get to see those pictures after the event? Do you have something to take with you as a small souvenir of that "moment in time"? No on both counts.
Well, that's the problem that John is trying to solve with Vividot® and his photo and video promotions services. John's company, Wishoo, has developed a way to uniquely identify a person from a digital photograph using a "colorwheel" - or an Imagecode, as he called it. They look like this:
When people check into an event, they get their name badge and a card that has their Imagecode sticker on it. They place that sticker somewhere on their namebadge. Each Imagecode is unique and is matched to a unique referral code. A photographer with a $1000 digital camera (the nice Canon Digtal Rebel) then spends the evening taking pictures of the event. Afterwards, you can go to the site listed on the card, input your unique code and see all the pictures of you.
That's right - the technology is good enough that it can search and match that tiny sticker on your name badge in any photo. The accuracy is pretty good - in the very high 90's and getting better. Low light, good light, close-up, at a distance - in most cases, the software can pretty easily search for the Imagecode and match it. Wishoo promotes this right now as a marketing and promotion tool - but I can see many uses for this. Think about how many photos an inventory control manager or insurance claims adjuster might archive. If only there were a way to quickly find a photo based on some unique identifier *in* the photograph...cool stuff.