Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Best Software Ever

As a former software engineer and generally voracious consumer of technology, I have seen and used a lot of software in my lifetime. Yesterday I installed what I am fairly certain is the Best Software Ever!!!

If you are not yet a Mac user, stop reading this post right now and go purchase a Mac. I'm serious. You need one in order to get iLife and you need iLife in order to use the amazing iPhoto '09. Yes, I think the Best Software Ever may be iPhoto '09. Ok, ok, I'm sure there are many other amazing applications out there that are making the world a better place, but there is nothing as fun and easy and just plain crazy genius out there today as iPhoto '09. (No, I do not work for Apple although I did work for Microsoft.)

What makes iPhoto '09 so much FUN??!! It recognizes faces and catalogs them for you, so if you, for example, have oh, let's just say 30,000 pictures or so in your digital library (ahem!), you don't have to go through all 30,000 by hand to figure out which ones your little loved ones (or your big loved ones) are in. You simply find a picture that has the face you want to identify in it; you name it, and voila! iPhoto presents you with many of the other photos that that person is in. So. Much. FUN!!

I admit it's not flawless, but even that was part of the fun. It was fun watching the software sift through all of our digital pictures (this process took hours given the number of pictures we have) and pick out the faces. Once it was done, it was fun seeing which faces it thought belonged together - it mostly guessed correctly and we got some good chuckles when it didn't.

If I seem a bit giddy, it's because I am. If you're a PC or haven't installed your copy yet, you can at least enjoy a demo by clicking here.

3 comments:

M3 said...

Hmm, how does it do with identifying twins? :-)

R... said...

Oh my goodness, that would be so much fun to try!! I'm going to drive up there right this instant to find out! Umm...I might have to wait until Island Boy wakes up from his nap and hubby gets home though... ;-)

If you get the chance to try it, let me know. It does amazingly well with our nephews even though the photos are over a period of time when they often looked alike and were both changing pretty rapidly (not twins, though!).

R... said...

Ok, I just realized that I don't need to drive up there to try it as I have plenty of pics of the girls right here in my library! The software knows they are not the same person, since they are often in the pics together and it does seem to be correctly guessing the right girl!

Bear in mind that one of the things I find so fun about this software is that when it guesses wrong, it can be pretty funny and that's not just for twins!