IBM software aims at total recall by tapping data from mobile phone

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 30 July 2008 04:59

Business IT - Technology

"This is like having a personal assistant for your memory," said Yaakov Navon, lead researcher and image processing expert at IBM's Haifa Research Lab.

"Our daily routines are overflowing with situations where we gain new information through meetings, advertisements, conferences, events, surfing the web, or even window shopping. Instead of going home and using a general web search to find that information, PENSIEVE helps the brain recall those everyday things you might normally forget."

IBM officials also suggest that the information collected could also be useful for presentation purposes, such as sharing the record of a business trip with colleagues.

Perhaps PENSIEVE would be even more useful in combination with a device like Microsoft's SenseCam, which captures images (and potentially audio) without user intervention - though privacy issues could not be ignored. But for now, camera phones are affordable and already in widespread use.