So today is Wednesday and i’m bored, after the day the markets had yesterday all you can do is sit back and have a laugh, so i was introduced to a new
service called today by a friend of mine Alisa called My Heritage, it’s a very cool service which allows you to map out your family tree amongst other things.
While doing some research on this company i found out that it was founded by Gilad Japhet who use to manage BRM Technologies’ anti-virus research unit until it was acquired by Symantec. My Heritage is actually based out of Israel and has a single goal of which is “Our vision has been to make it easier for people around the world to use the power of the Internet to discover their heritage and strengthen their bonds with family and friends”. A very noble goal to say the least.
The best part about My Heritage is the integration into other sites, i.e facebook, myspace, friendster and many more, the easier they make this the more viral there product will be, and let me tell you i can guarantee this is going to be a very viral product.
This is the viral part, the have one section on the sight called Face Recognition - Celebrity Matches, which basically takes a picture that you upload and then it looks in their database of celebrities and tries to find the best matches, while no means is this system 100% accurate it is pretty fun and this is the component that will make this site viral, think of all the myspace monkeys and facebook junkies telling there friends how the internet thinks they look like J-Lo or David Beckham or even god forbid Britney Spears.
Well i had to give this a little test so i figured who could i use that people would know so we could all judge the results? Then it hit me…… John Chow people all over the net recognize him and then we could all judge the results to see the accuracy.
So i uploaded this photo of John Chow
And now the magic happens, this is where My Heritage really shines, it goes and looks and looks to see who this guy looks like.
Well to my surprise it turns out John Chow is actually quite unique but dont fret ladies and gents, it did manage to find some results.
Drum roll please…………………………….
Now let’s go over the results, with the highest percentage and in first place we have
1. At a 68% match we have Gao Xingjian, if your asking who the hell is that? well go look him up in Wikipedia he is actually a Chinese Novelist who in 2000 won a pulitzer prize.
2. At a 64% match we have Tsui Hark he is the equivalent of Steven Speilberg in Hong Kong, at this point i seem to like the results, then something strange occurs
3. Also at 64% we have Song Hye-Kyo, she is a Korean model and actress, now no offence to John but this girl is cute and well i think there seems to be some error in the program, until i got the 4th result then i knew this was to good to be true, it was all the proof i needed.
4. At 58% and all the proof i need the man himself Kim Jong IL, at this point i realized that this software was not only accurate but also 100% correct, the man who throws stones at panda’s and other unspeakable acts is related to Kim Jong (or as i call him Kim John IL) IL himself.
5. If Kim Jong IL wasn’t bad enough apparently My Heritage thinks John Chow looks like Roberto Benigni the famous Italian director who gave that infamous oscar speech.
So all in all i would have to say that My Heritage is going to a great upcoming site and it will be all over the net in a few short months.
And the final conclusion is that John Chow has a 58% chance of being related to Kim Jong IL
