Morph Pictures Using People Hopper App [Google Labs]

Google Labs has launched an interesting product, People Hopper that lets you morph your picture into your friends. Given two images, it hops across millions of public images in orkut so that one image is smoothly transformed into another.

Add the app to your Orkut profile, select two images and let Google do the magic.

This new application hops across millions of user images in orkut so that one image is smoothly transformed into another. To do this, People Hopper uses “image matching technology.” First, faces are automatically detected in public profile images and normalized incontrast and size. Then, for each image, we find other public profile images that are similar to one another. Finally, when you pick a friend you want to be your end match, we just hop along similar public images, step-by-step, until the connection is made. – blog

An interesting time-pass application that will surely find takers among Orkut’s user base.

I tried the application, and even though results are fun to see, the missing piece is the lack of interestingness in connected photos. Ideally, one should be able to expand their social graph one’s connecting photos are found – but don’t think that’s going to be the case. Also, few updates on how one’s picture was part of other paths would make the app interesting and sticky.

What’s your take?

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