Facial Recognition Cameras in Bars Analyze Where The Party's At

By Clay Dillow Posted 06.29.2011 at 1:49 pm 4 Comments

SceneTap SceneTap

Finally, facial recognition technology is trickling down to the little people in a way that is absolutely meaningful. Never mind the camera-focusing technologies and the Facebook photo-tagging applications. “SceneTap” wants to help you get lucky at the bar.

SceneTap is a start-up that is using facial recognition tech to help you eschew the sausage fest at your usual watering holes and find the hangouts where you might actually have a chance of conversing with someone of the gender you’re looking for (whatever gender that might be). It will do so via a handy smartphone app that will map the joints where the objects of your desire are congregating at any given moment.

It works like this: bars install facial recognition cameras at their entrances and exits. These cameras, we are assured, are not equipped with good enough technology to actually identify you or cross reference images with something like Facebook. They simply detect gender. And in doing so, they keep a running tally of how many guys and dolls are in a given juke joint at a given time.

Using the accompanying app, you can get a good read on what your chances are at a particular place before you pay cab fare across town or drop a cover charge on some velvet-roped joint that turns out to be empty. But that’s as far as SceneTap will get you. As far as actually approaching the bar and tapping him/her on the shoulder--unfortunately for you, Casanova, there’s no app for that.

[Forbes]

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4 Comments

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Turbo Two Tone

06/29/11 at 2:16 pm

I love the way the Phone is labeled "Virgin".

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mad_max

06/29/11 at 3:02 pm

lol is that an iPhone 4 running on the Virgin Mobile network? I'm guessing this was photoshopped; don't get your hopes up. But don't worry, VM fanboys, the Triumph (a Droid variant) is coming July 19.

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SceneTap

06/29/11 at 3:18 pm

Thanks for the write-up! SceneTap will also be able to give users the average age of the bar crowd as well as real-time bar specials. We're launching in Chicago in July and expanding nationwide soon after - Head over to Facebook.com/SceneTapApp to request SceneTap in your favorite bars.

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08/12/11 at 3:29 pm

This is a really stupid idea. I don't want my face scanned and sent to 3rd party servers every time I go to a bar.

Also, any bar can easily hack this system by printing up some photos of faces and having an employee walk by the cameras with different faces taped over their own face.

If people want to give up their own privacy by posting to sites like Foursquare, that is fine, but don't violate my privacy when I go out in public.

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