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OK, I admit it. I was distracting myself tonight from reading my Gillette Fusion case for Marketing by browsing through some Facebook photos. I was just clicking through a photo album when BAM! an ugmo popped up (no, it wasn’t mine, smart ass). After the initial sting went away, an idea hit me.

One of the latest features in Picasa is the ability to tag people in your photo library by using facial recognition. With just a few training photos, I have been told that Picasa can quickly identify someone in a whole library of images. Kyle tells me that Picasa was even able to tag Abraham Lincoln in a few photos from DC.

"So what?", you ask. Sure, facial recognition isn’t really anything new, but what if it could be used to tag ugmos in a web photo album? You tag a few faces that were hit with the ugly stick, and then let the facial recognition software take care of finding the rest. Instead of putting a frame around the ugmos’ faces, a blue dot is placed over the face to obscure it from view. Instead of appearing when you hover over the name or face of the tagged person, the blue dot will always be present, unless you hover over the dot for an extended period of time, say 5 seconds. At that point, the face will be revealed, and you will only have yourself to blame for seeing it.

I know, this is crude and shallow of me to even think of this, but you know you’ve accidentally viewed a photo on Flickr, Facebook or MySpace that you wish you hadn’t opened because of one super ugmo. If someone creates this mashup, once you come across an ugmo for the first time, just tag it. You may have to tag it once or twice more, but then the facial recognition should take over and save your retinas from that awful exposure in the future.

I should be studying for my MSIT 431 Statistics midterm right now, but I decided to have a short Google Reader break. Of course, the break is a little bit longer than I had originally planned. The current reason? No, it’s not the 25 things meme on Facebook. I made a Twitter mosaic after seeing @MrsCDG’s (Carla) Twitter mosaic.

Here’s my mosaic of Twitter friends (tweeps that have reciprocated my following them):

Get your twitter mosaic here.

If you’re on Twitter, follow me @markomni. Then, make your own Twitter mosaic.

It’s so cold outside! Here’s a reminder of warmer weather and horrible lyrics (Facebook registration required):

Note: This was supposed to be posted originally on November 16, 2008. Obviously there has been a slight delay. I hope it reads OK, but in case it doesn’t, now you know why. Oh, by the way, Happy New Year!

Just over ten and a half years ago I graduated from high school. Saturday, November 15, was my ten year high school reunion. First, Chris and I found it quite humorous when we signed in and received our name badges, complete with our senior pictures. Chris later recalled to me the episode of Psych where Shawn and Gus go to their reunion, and Gus is ridiculed throughout the evening for making the name badges with their pictures on them. It was so totally cliché, but there was at least one time it did come in handy (not that I recall talking to the person whose badge I needed to read to remember her name).

It was great to see people like Sam, Ilyse, Jenny, Tina, Melissa, Katie, Briony, Lindsey, Shilpa, Ami, Dennis, Grant, Chris (the other one), Al*, and I am sure there are others I am forgetting (or I had a fairly anti-social night limiting myself to talking to a dozen or so people). It was great to get a chance to talk to you all. There were many people I had not seen since graduation or prom, and Facebook stalking can do only so much as compared to meeting face to face.

To Laura, Robyn, Shilpa and Lindsey, you put on a good party. Thanks for taking care of it all. I just wish I could have stayed a little while longer, but it had been a long day, starting with 8 hours of graduate school.

Overall, I can say I enjoyed myself at the reunion. Do I feel like I am old enough to be attending reunions? Not really. Am I looking forward to future reunions? More so than I looked forward to this one.

Just last week, we missed the unofficial Reunion II at Easy Street Pub, just a brisk walk from our house. We had to miss it because of our own annual holiday party. I hear it was good times for all, and I do wish I could have been there. I guess I’ll have to wait for Reunion III to catch up with people again.

* Al was not in our class, but she knew just as many, if not more, people than Grant, Chris and I. That was one of the best parts of the night for me.

This was originally posted (registration and friending may be required) on Facebook. So many comments were made there that I thought it appropriate to post it here on my blog, too. Of course, feel free to continue commenting here or there.

SUPPOSEDLY if you’ve seen over 85 movies, you have no life. Mark the ones you’ve seen. There are 219 movies on this list. Copy this list, go to your own facebook account, paste this as a note. Then, put x’s next to the movies you’ve seen, add them up, change the header adding your number, and click publish at the side.

(continue reading…)

There once was a time that I posted multiple entries in a day on my blog, and on a regular basis. My most active month on the blog resulted in 30 posts. That was December 2005, the end of my most active year on my blog, averaging almost 19 posts per month (ppm). I slowed down a bit in 2006, averaging just over 11 ppm, and I averaged 14 ppm in 2007. So far in 2008, I have averaged just under 9 ppm. Since may, I have not had more than 7 posts in a single month. December is almost over, I’ve averaged only 2.5 posts per month since September, and that includes this post! I have managed to always have at least 2 ppm since my first post on February 28, 2003.

Then came October of last year. All of a sudden my wife is on Facebook trying to communicate with current and former students. I decided that if my wife had finally bit the bullet on this, I might as well, too. Pretty quickly after setting up my profile on Facebook, I jumped onto Twitter. Between being able to tweet from my cell phone and getting Twitter to update my Facebook status, I had quick access to microblog on-the-go. Unfortunately for my blog, that meant not sitting down and hammering out posts.

This post is itself an example of this. I originally started writing this post in September, but it had sat untouched as a draft since September 25th. Why? Because it was much more convenient to microblog on Twitter, Facebook, Yammer, BrightKite and TwitPic, than it was to open up my WordPress admin page and finish the post. I even found it easier to just share the interesting things I had read in Google Reader, or post links to other cool things using delicious.

Of course, it didn’t help that I was spending eight hours in class every Saturday and an additional five to ten hours per week on homework. So, I guess in addition to Facebook and Twitter, I can blame my lack of blog activity on grad school, too.

We’ll see if I can bring the activity up a little bit during my short break (only to see the activity plummet again in mid-January as the new quarter starts). We’ll see how that goes.

Normal Moments and its founder Tricia Fragen have been chosen as one of the eleven finalists for Martha Stewart’s Dreamers into Doers Award. Through Martha Stewart, Normal Moments has received so much national publicity, and that has been great for us. Recently we have heard from people outside of the Chicago area who would like to help Normal Moments and its cause. That is so awesome!

We are currently running neck-and-neck in the People’s Choice Award with Kathy Tolleson and ROAR Motorcycles for Women. Please help Normal Moments win the People’s Choice Award and register to vote once every 24 hours at the Dreamers into Doers Award website. The voting runs through November 18, so there isn’t much time! Hurry over to the site and vote now! Then, spread the word to your friends and family, post about it on your blog, on Facebook, on Twitter, on Pownce, on Ning, and anywhere else you can get the word out! Help us help the critically ill children and their families now!

If you’ve voted, leave a comment below to let me know. Then I can let you know how awesome you are!