How to source your family tree (and maybe future geeks as well)

Posted by Jim Stroud

March 17, 2006

One thing I love about my gig at Microsoft is that I get to spend so much time online and while doing so, come across little oddities like this one. There is a company out there called “My Heritage” and it does a very cool thing. In a nutshell, it offers facial recognition for your photos and family tree. (Oooohhh…) Imagine uploading photos of your family, the system scans your photos, compares it to other people’s photos and before you know it you have just discovered that you have family in Venezuela! (Or at least, people who bare a striking resemblance to you or those in your family.)

To spread the word about their company, they have unleased a great ego tool as a demo. “Find the celebrity in you.” What this does is compare your photo to celebrity photos in its database. Sometimes the results are a bit iffy. Check out what it thought of our CEO - Steve Ballmer. Hmmmm… I would have thought Patrick Stewart would have been closer. (I mean… they’re both bald.)

I think I had better luck when I uploaded my photo for giggles. Wow! My celebrity self is Oscar-Winner Cuba Gooing, Jr.!!! (Well… show me the money!)

So which celebrity do you look most like?

Beyond this, I am wondering how to spin this on recruiting and I am getting a buzz. What if I could attend a tradeshow on the latest geek technlogy and take lots of pictures or better yet, I find people who have posted on their blogs (or in Flickr) pictures from a tradeshow and (perfect world) track them down to their homepage where there is contact info and a reference to their technical background. Or… is that a bit creepy? Like I’m stalking or something. Actually, I brought this strategy up before when I evaluated Riya last year, which has a similar concept. So, what do you think? If you could use “My Heritage” (or Riya) to do what I am proposing, would you?