Augmented reality and Facebook's very real issue

25/02/10 posted by Liz Niland

Augmented reality is rapidly becoming slightly less Terminator, and a lot more useful. The iPhone-induced augmented reality rise began in the tail end of last year, and we are beginning to see glimpses of a future world that sci-fi films have been predicting for years. While smartphone applications like Layar and Google can advise you of the nearest cafe to your current location, the next generation of augmented reality is moving towards facial recognition.

"Augmented identification", as reported by Wired, is technology being explored by Astonishing Tribe - a Swedish software company - in their most recent development trials. It’s still a fairly long way off hitting the app store yet, but ideally Recognizr will use the smartphone’s camera to recognise the face of an individual, and then offer up details, including the various social networking sites to which the person belongs.

Augmented reality, along with position tracking devices and location-based applications, was one of the key areas identified by online marketing experts as a social trend to watch in 2010. Given the bad buzz that surrounded Google’s most recent social offering, it’s easy to see why privacy issues abound in these areas.

While Facebook have managed to keep their name out of any privacy troubles this week, the site has come under fire from Australian media and authorities for their perceived lack of action over the defacing of memorial pages set up by those mourning the recent tragic deaths of two schoolchildren. With calls for real-time monitoring and solutions to put a stop to cyber vandalism, everyone from Queensland Premier Anna Bligh to Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson has been lobbying for Facebook HQ to make a move.

The only word so far from the Other Side was via Debbie Frost - Facebook’s Director of Communications and Public Policy. In a statement to The Punch, she wrote that the site "is highly self-regulating, and users can and do report content that they find questionable or offensive," which is then acted on by "professional reviewers". Frost also recommended that the administrators or creators of Groups and Pages use the available privacy controls to monitor users.