There is a new people search engine called “Wink” that allows users to do people searches across various social networks from a single search engine.

The Wink site currently allows users to search over 100 million people profiles on MySpace, Bebo and LinkedIn and they will be adding other social network sites as their search engine grows.

From the Wink press release –

Wink searches across over 100 million people from all walks of life,” said Michael Tanne, founder and CEO of Wink. “We are really excited about helping people connect across continents and cultures as our searchable index of public profiles from multiple social networks grows into the hundreds of millions.

SEARCHING SOCIAL NETWORKS WITH WINK

Wink provides a unique way to find new friends that share your interests online. By searching across multiple social networks, for the first time people have one place to find new friends, discover new interests and stay connected across many social networks. More than just a name search, Wink People Search also provides several ways to search for people by their interests, affiliations, general location (no addresses), musical tastes, age and occupation.

You can access the site at Wink.com

New Scientist Tech is reporting on a software program developed in Japan that makes common name Google people searches more accurate.

From the article -

Scouring the web for someone with a common name could become easier with software that automatically distinguishes between individuals by analysing the details of search results.

The software tool, developed by researchers at the University of Tokyo in Japan, picks apart the results of a search engine query, identifying unique identities within these results. For example, it can tell the difference between Michael Jackson the pop singer and a travelling beer expert of the same name, who also appears on the first page of results produced by Google.

The program analyses the first 100 results returned by Google in response to a name search. It then examines common words in each summary to see if any results may relate to different people with the same name.

The program clusters together results thought to relate to different people. For example, it creates one cluster of results for pop signer Michael Jackson, defined by key words such as “music” and “trial”, and another for beer expert Michael Jackson, defined by the words “beer” and “travel”. In testing, the software was between 70% and 95% accurate at telling apart people with the same name.

Source: Software distinguishes between online namesakes

The Maui News is reporting on mapping and cell phone locator technology that helps 911 dispatchers locate people in distress so that emergency crews can be dispatched to the caller’s location.

From the article –

The call came in the middle of the night, when a panicked visitor saw his friend’s car go off the road into a ditch.

“He didn’t know where he was,” said Maui police 911 dispatcher Dyann Cabreros, who handled the emergency call from the visitor using a cellular telephone who had been following his friend. “All he knew was he was in Haiku somewhere.”

Using new computer mapping technology, Cabreros tracked the caller’s location to the 2100 block of Kaupakalua Road. She quickly dispatched emergency crews to the scene of the 3:25 a.m. crash July 19.

Before the enhanced 911 system was developed, dispatchers would have to ask cellular callers for addresses or landmarks to try to determine where they were, Cabreros said.

“It would have definitely taken longer,” she said.

Last week, with the completion of testing for all five wireless carriers with service on the island, the Maui Police Department became the first in the state with the capability to identify phone numbers and locations of 911 callers using cellular telephones, said Lt. Tivoli Faaumu, commander of the police Communications Section.

Previously, he said that information could be tracked only for callers from land telephone lines, Faaumu said.

The wireless communication carriers on Maui are Nextel, Verizon Wireless, Cingular, T-Mobile and Sprint.

Source: 911 Dispatchers now able to locate people in distress

A new search engine that promises to find people in photos on any web site is currently in the alpha testing phase of development. The new people search engine is called Polar Rose and is the brainchild of Swedish mathemetician Jan Erik Solem.

The search engine will recognize people and faces in digital online photographs, with the use of proprietary mathematical models and the input of users, who will recognize and tag people in photos with names. We are still unsure as to how Polar Rose will differ from the people search & facial recognition search site at Riya.com.

Republished from the Polar Rose web site –

Polar Rose is a photo search engine that lets you find anyone, on any photo, on any site.

Polar Rose uses unique face recognition technology to help search and find pictures of people, whether in your individual web album or across the web. We’re picking up where traditional text search engines simply can’t go!

Polar Rose is available as a browser plug-in, hence it works on any public photo. No matter if you’re browsing flickr, 23, Kodak gallery, or any other website, Polar Rose lets you discover people in pictures. Learn who people are, and help improve results by tagging pictures together with other users.

You can sign up for a notification when the the Polar Rose search engine enters beta testing @ Polar Rose.

Google Earth satellite images have become notorious for capturing images of ancient ruins, military installations as well as missile sites.

In yet another bizarre example of the spying power of wired technology in the hands of the public, the UK’s Daily Mail is reporting that Google Earth’s satellite images have caught nude sunbathers in the Netherlands. Ubiquitous computer programs and wired networks are recording and displaying the everyday activities of people. With web searches and Google Earth satellite images, all the world has truly become a stage - and not always for the better.

From the article —

When most people use virtual globe Google Earth, they look up such sights as Sydney Opera House, Big Ben or even their own homes.

But two of the computer program’s users got an extra surprise when they explored the Dutch city of the Hague - and spotted topless sunbathers.

A Dutch blogger looking for his favourite pub accidentally zeroed in on a man wearing just shorts, lying on the roof of a house by a canal.

A woman lying face down on a separate rooftop terrace was spied by an unknown browser who mentioned it on an online forum.

The sunbathers found their way on to Google Earth because they were catching a tan when the satellite used for mapping the planet was passing overhead.

Source: Daily Mail

Executives at Hewlett-Packard aren’t the only people playing “Spy vs. Spy”. According to a recent LA Times article, in our current high-tech, wired and Google world, I spy, you spy, we all spy on people; but we only get mad when someone else spies on us.

From the article –

Women Google prospective dates. Neighbors check what the house next door sold for on Zillow.com. People use online satellite imagery to sneak a peek into the backyards of the rich and famous. Hidden nanny cams record baby sitters. More than 75% of employers monitor what their workers do on the job — and more than a third record every computer keystroke.

“You really have, in a good and bad sense, a democratization of surveillance technology,” said Lee Tien, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit technology advocacy group.

For $155, for instance, nervous new parents can buy a wireless camera small enough to hide in a smoke detector to keep tabs on the nanny. It even has night vision. For $60, DisneyMobile sells a kid’s cellular phone with satellite tracking technology developed for the military.

Beth Givens of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in San Diego knows one man who is such a privacy “zealot” that he considers any piece of junk mail a violation of personal space.

But he volunteered that he would willingly do a background check if he felt something was amiss about his daughter’s boyfriend. Indeed, he even went dumpster diving to investigate the dealings of a corporation he had invested in.

“People are conflicted, but they are in all aspects of life,” Givens said. “They have one set of standards for themselves and another for others, including large corporations.”

Source: In a High-Tech World, I Spy, You Spy, We Spy

As people search engines grow more powerful, the world grows smaller. This story from The Daily Press reports on a man who reunited a sailor and his lost military hat, 27 years after it was swept out to sea.

After doing an extensive internet search, Vietnam veteran Will Miller reunited sailor Jeff Harris with his lost military cap after 27 years.

From the article –

One cold, rain-swept night in 1979, tethered to the deck of the nuclear attack submarine USS Birmingham (SSN-695) entering Hampton Roads Harbor, sonar technician Jeff Harris was hit by a wind-whipped wave that snatched his ship’s ball cap.

Months later, while walking along Chesapeake Boulevard beach in Hampton, Will Miller, a Vietnam veteran and Navy commander, happened upon Harris’ cap, half-buried in the sand. Knowing how important a ship’s cap is to its owner, Miller salvaged the hat, hoping one day to find its owner. The cap was packed away for years but recently resurfaced at Miller’s Florida home.

“It suddenly fell out of a box onto my computer keyboard, right in front of me,” said Miller. “I guess it was telling me, ‘It’s time to get me home.’ ”

An extensive Internet search led Miller to a USS Birmingham Web site and finally to Harris. The two sent e-mails back and forth, and one night Miller’s phone rang.

“This is Jeff Harris,” the voice on the phone said. “You have my hat!”

The two sailors talked for almost half an hour, exchanging sea stories, the common bond between mariners.

“Most non-seagoing folks wouldn’t appreciate how attached a sailor gets to his hat,” Miller said. “Your hat protects you from sun, wind, salt and cold, and when you lose it, especially one with your ship’s name on it, it’s a big thing. I’m delighted to get it back to Jeff.”

This article shows how powerful free web searches can be, when trying to find people and do background research. If Will Miller can reunite Jeff Harris with his lost military hat after 27 years, you can certainly find the people and background information that you are searching for with a little effort and creativity.

Powerful people search and background search tools are no longer limited to skip tracers and professional private investigators. With search engines like Google and other free people search sites, anyone can find the people and information that they are looking for absolutely FREE.

Source: DailyPress.com.

According to a recent article in PC World, Google has purchased a photo search and image recognition software firm called Neven Vision, paving the way for the gathering of information from digital pictures for use in image recognition searches.

From the article –

Adrian Graham, Picasa product manager, announced the deal in an official Google blog posting today, saying that Neven Vision brings expertise on automatically obtaining information from a photo.

“It could be as simple as detecting whether or not a photo contains a person, or, one day, as complex as recognizing people, places, and objects. This technology just may make it a lot easier for you to organize and find the photos you care about,” Graham wrote.

These types of advances in free and public online web searches will eventually make paid people searches and information providers obsolete for the majority of personal and professional sleuthing.

The AP is reporting on a gross government oversight by L.A. County. A 17 year old girl who was reunited with her biological father after 10 years is suing L.A. County for failing to use “due dilligence” to reunite them sooner.

From the article –

A teenage girl who had a much-celebrated reunion with her father last year after a decade in foster care is now suing the county for taking so long to find him.

Los Angeles County supervisors said last September that the meeting of Melinda Smith, now 17, and her father Thomas Marion Smith, was the result of a “groundbreaking effort,” and congratulated county agencies for locating the father.

But the lawsuit alleges that the Department of Children and Family Services failed to use “due diligence” to locate Thomas Smith as required by law. It claims the agency never notified Smith that his daughter was in foster care and never gave him a chance to claim her.

“He’s a registered voter with a valid driver’s license and an open child support case,” said Smith’s attorney, L. Wallace Pate. “All they had to do, at any time during those 10 years, was pick up the phone and ask the L.A. County Child Support Services Department, `Do you have a contact on this man?’”

County officials would not comment on the case because of the pending litigation.

You can read the entire article @ Girl who was reunited with father sues L.A. County.

ZDNet is reporting that Riya, a creator of advanced facial recognition software for photos, is planning on deploying their technology on the world wide web to offer a web search that would attempt to search and recognize people in the billions of publicly available images online.

From the article –

Currently, Riya allows users to upload photos to its site and users can train the system to recognize faces. It also recognizes text in images, and can slice photos by time taken (not uploaded), location (with a Google Maps mashup) and found text. It also provides tagging, photo sharing and public and private albums. I have over a thousand photos on Riya, and the recognition technology is impressive.

So far, Riya users have uploaded over 7.23 million photos (it launched on March 21), and users have ‘trained’ about 60 percent of the faces uploaded, Shah told me.

He expects to hit 10 million photos in the next six to eight weeks. “As a photo site, we have exceeded the initial growth rate of Flickr,” Shah said. Of course, there is more broadband connectivity than when Flickr came on the scene, but there are also many more photos uploading sites. Flickr was acquired by Yahoo in March 2005, and has over 100,000 million photos.

But Shah isn’t planning to focus on photo organization, sharing and hosting. His goal is to build in capabilities to search across billions of publicly available images. “We are still focused on people uploading [images],” Shah said. “And, we have been a search engine the whole time. We are better at finding people, and our [searching] is growing faster than uploading. You will see us do more crawling and searching of public images in addition to what is uploaded.”

You can read the entire article on ZDNet @ Riya heading into Web search.

You can visit the Riya web site @ Riya.