Tag Your Photos Automatically: Riya

I heard the gossip that Riya just got picked up by Google for a cool $40M (not bad for an alpha stage start-up). I went over to check out their site and was impressed. Another great idea that seems so simple once you stumble across it...and those are always the best ones.

Here's the concept: tagging your photos to make them easily searchable is a real pain in the ass. When you transfer files from your camera to your computer they usually come in some undistringuishable format like DSC10003332.jpeg. If you ever want to search your pictures for a person or text, there is no way to do that. I would use Flickr a lot more if I didn't have to manually tag all my pictures. Riya helps you avoid that problem by using face and text-recognition technology. You tell it what you look like and it will comb your pictures and apply your name as a tag wherever your face exists. Genius! This sort of technology has been around for a while, but this is the first good CONSUMER application that I've seen.

I don't have an account with Riya yet. Folks from Riya, help me out. A screenshot from their public search is below:

Technorati Tag: Riya