OrCam’s MyMe uses facial recognition to remember everyone you meet

Meet the Orcam MyMe, a tiny device that you clip on your T-shirt to help you remember faces. The OrCam MyMe features a small smartphone-like camera and a proprietary facial-recognition algorithm so that you can associate names with faces. It can be a useful device at business conferences, or to learn more about how you spend a typical day.

This isn’t OrCam’s first device. The company has been selling the MyEye for a few years. It’s a wearable device for visually impaired people that you clip to your glasses. Thanks to its camera and speaker, you can point your finger at some text and get some audio version of the test near your ear. It can also tell you if there’s somebody familiar in front of you.

OrCam is expanding beyond this market with a mass market product. It features the same technological foundation, but with a different use case. OrCam’s secret sauce is that it can handle face recognition and optical character recognition on a tiny device with a small battery — images are not processed in the cloud.

It’s also important to note that the OrCam MyMe doesn’t record video or audio. When the device detects a face, it creates a signature and tries to match it with existing signatures. While it’s not a spy camera, it still feels a bit awkward when you realize that there’s a camera pointed at you.

When there’s someone in front of you, the device sends a notification to your phone and smart watch. You can then enter the name of this person on your phone so that the next notification shows the name of the person you’re talking with.

If somebody gives you a business card, you can also hold it in front of you. The device then automatically matches the face with the information on the business card.

After that, you can tag people in different categories. For instance, you can create a tag for family members, another one for colleagues and another one for friends.

The app shows you insightful graphs representing your work-life balance over the past few weeks and months. If you want to quantify everything in your life, this could be an effective way of knowing that you should spend more time with your family for instance.

While the device isn’t available just yet, the company already sold hundreds of early units on Kickstarter. Eventually, OrCam wants to create a community of enthusiasts and figure out new use cases.

I saw the device at CES last week and it’s much smaller than you’d think based on photos. You don’t notice it unless you’re looking for the device. It’s not as intrusive as Google Glass for instance. You can optionally use a magnet if the clip doesn’t work with what you’re wearing.

OrCam expects to ship the MyMe in January 2020 for $399. It’s an impressive little device, but the company also faces one challenge — I’m not sure everyone feels comfortable about always-on facial recognition just yet.

Amazon re:MARS heads to the desert to talk AI, automation, and space

Amazon has announced that it’ll be heading to Las Vegas later this year to host a new conference centered around AI, automation, and space. The event, which has been dubbed re:MARS, will run for four days in June and Amazon claims it will “bring together innovative minds with diverse skill sets.” Those who are excited for the future of AI … Continue reading

Once a Musical Oddity, the Stylophone Is Now a Fully-Capable, $350 Analog Synthesizer

The Stylophone started life as a kitschy electronic toy instrument—the digital version of the kazoo, if you will—but over the years has slowly developed new sounds and features making it more than just a novelty. The new Stylophone Gen R-8 is an evolutionary leap compared to previous versions of the instrument, and…

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Mattel's free 'Uno' mobile game is now available worldwide

While third-party Uno apps have been around for some time, Mattel released its own mobile version of the classic card game in certain countries and on Facebook Instant Games last year. Now, the toymaker and NetEase, through their Mattel163 studio, ar…

EA Says They Are ‘Fully Committed’ To Making Star Wars Games

Recently there was a report about how EA had apparently cancelled an open world Star Wars game that was in development. Following the controversy of Star Wars: Battlefront 2’s loot boxes, we’re sure many were wondering what would become of EA’s Star Wars games in the future.

For those who have enjoyed the publisher’s take on Star Wars games, you can rest assured that they will not be going anywhere. In a statement made to Variety, EA has expressed that they remain fully committed to making more Star Wars games in the future. The statement does not confirm or deny the cancellation reports, but it does acknowledge it, which we suppose kind of says something already. However that’s just speculation on our part.

According to the statement, “There’s been speculation overnight about one of our ‘Star Wars’ projects. As a natural part of the creative process, the great work by our team in Vancouver continues and will evolve into future ‘Star Wars’ content and games. We’re fully committed to making more ‘Star Wars’ games, we’re very excited about ‘Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order’ from Respawn, and we’ll share more about our new projects when the time is right.”

The Star Wars game in development was initially developed by Visceral Games before they were shut down. The game then got transferred to EA Vancouver who then transformed the linear game into an open world one. It is unclear why it got shelved so don’t get your hopes up about seeing it anytime soon.

EA Says They Are ‘Fully Committed’ To Making Star Wars Games , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Researchers make ice repelling materials breakthrough

Ice is one of the most significant hazards to drivers and pilots and is blamed for multibillion-dollar losses each year in the US. Ice causes all manner of delays in air travel and damages infrastructure, power generation equipment, and power transmission facilities each year. Scientists from the University of Houston have made a breakthrough in repelling ice that could have … Continue reading

Pixel 3 Lite leaks again, this time in hands-on video

In the months since the Pixel 3 and 3 XL launched, a third phone in the line called the Pixel 3 Lite has leaked a considerable number of times. At this point, most of us are convinced that the Pixel 3 Lite is a phone that Google plans to release in the near future, but if you still need more … Continue reading

Lab-Grown 'Perfect' Human Blood Vessels Are a Thing Now

An international team of scientists claim to have pulled off a first: Three-dimensional replicas of human blood vessels that are grown in a petri dish. The trippy accomplishment, detailed in a new paper out Wednesday in Nature, will hopefully let us better understand and study crippling diseases like diabetes.

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Researchers train robot dog to pick itself back up after a fall

Researchers have taught a robot dog to overcome one of the toughest challenges for a four-legged droid: how to get back up after a fall. In a paper published in the Science Robotics journal, its Swiss creators describe how they trained a neural netwo…

GOP Dismisses Suggestion That State Of Union Be Postponed

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen denied anyone’s safety is compromised.