Picture This

I wrote about Riya.com a month ago; now it's out in beta, so you can try out its face recognition technology. I did, and was intrigued to find that this photo was tagged as "Bill Gates". Maybe Riya uses more artificial intelligence than they're letting on.

It's certainly a clever idea - after all, the one thing people (misanthropes apart) are interested in, is people. But you do have to wonder about the underlying technology when it uses addresses like this:

http://www.riya.com/highRes?search=1fSPySWh
FrHn7AnWgnSyHaqJl6bzuGByoFKJuG1H%2Fv
otjYbqlIMI22Qj88Vlcvz2uSnkixrhzHJP%0Aej%
2B9VuGvjiodlKDrBNS8pgy%2FaVqvckjfyo%2
BjhlL1sjK5CgHriGhifn3s2C1q%2B%2FnL1Emr
0OUPvn%2FM%0AJ0Ire5Zl2QUQQLUMi2Naq
Ny1zboiX7JtL77OG96NmV5VT8Buz4bzlyPFmi
ppcvmBJagMcftZjHUG%0AFlnXYIfp1VOGWx
gYijpgpDcsU9M4&pageNumber=9&e=bIaIR30d
SGNoZcG8jWL8z2LhcH%2FEg1LzsBF%2F6pr
Fd2Jm7tpMKFCXTu%2FBsOKk%2FVdS

I know a picture is supposed to be worth a thousand words, but not in the URL, surely....