A German government agency that oversees privacy issues has reportedly approved Google's implementation of facial recognition technology. Although the same agency has warned that it will take action against Facebook for using similar technology, the regulators are said to be less concerned with Google's opt-in approach.
Google has introduced facial recognition technology for Google+, enabling users to quickly tag photos without manually entering identities for individual pictures. Users can access the new feature by creating a new album with pictures that include people's faces. The system automatically groups photos for each person, with options to tag by name or e-mail address.
ModMyiFone.com forum members have discovered a new utility for jailbroken iPhones which allows for handwriting recognition using a small grey area. The beta software can recognize both Latin and Chinese characters at the moment, transcribing finger motions into editable text on a yellow notepad-style document. User poetic_folly notes that installing HWPen requires the user to add iphonecake.com/src/all as the installer source.
Apple has posted the availability of a Handwriting Recognition Engineer position, citing the need for a dedicated employee for its Mac OS X handwriting recognition technology. According to MacRumors.com, the individual would be responsible for enhancing the existing product, as well as extending the technology's influence to "other Applications and the iPhone," suggesting Apple is trying to recapture the feel of its Newton handheld platform.
