As I type, I am awaiting the magical travel hour for heading to the airport to attend the 2012 Family Online Safety Institute Conference in Washington D.C. Last year’s event was pretty exciting with a mix of individuals focused on learning or sharing more about the online safety of children.

I think for me, meeting the First Lady of the Dominican Republic was my favorite moment. However, listening to the Pew Research Center deliver recent studies in person came in a close second. Third would have been participating in some of the conversations between some of the MOST famous parental bloggers around.

Here’s a video recap of some of the 2011 highlights, so I won’t bore you with my own opinions have a look for yourself!

In reality, FOSI has had a busy year that I am certain will provide an even better build of resources for securing cyberspace via technology and research findings. Let’s go FOSI!

Here’s a sneak peek of what I expect will be a great conference.

Not certain if you should attend or not? Here’s the link to the conference itinerary.

2012 FOSI Conference Agenda Link!

Perhaps the question should be, “what do I NOT want to miss?”

Hope to see you there, come see us at Table 18. We’re the table that gets more naked, because some things shouldn’t be shared.

In an attempt to answer this question, I chose to take a look at my own video consuming and producing habits. I mean, I do spend a bit of time watching what’s trending or just watching what other people are sharing as well as capturing my sons’ band. Below,  are a few I’ve snagged that I’ve run across. I categorized them according to what I think the intent of production was,  but I haven’t used any professional classifiers in my list of “Why was this made”, just what seems to be the case. However, feel free to chime in or add to my list. Who knows, we could help some reach the coveted “viral” status. Enjoy!

News –

The buzz is that more and more people are getting their news from online sources with drastic drops in the print media. The attraction maybe that it’s often as close to real-time as a person can get without being present to whatever event. Just this this week, CBS news posted a video about where the stars are from one of our all time favorite viral videos “Charlie Bit My Finger”. The news is that both boys are well and are still quite the viral phenomena appearing in commercials etc. while their original clip to fame has now received over 1/2 a billion views. Because I’m nostalgic, I’ll post the original video along with the news story.

Charlie Bit My Finger Update!

The Original Charlie Bit My Finger!

Communications –

If you’re anything at all like me you’ve got friends spread from one pole of the globe to the other and its often hard to get on the phone to share anything. Well its becoming more and more popular to share via video. Just record and send!

Skype’s version of keeping people connected, Say it With Skype!

Just For Grins –

Sometimes it’s relaxing just to get a few giggles and we’ve been doing it for years! So, here’s this weeks top “trenders” from America’s Funniest Videos!

I’ve never seen a raccoon give a hug.

Political Points of View –

Although, this video is being shared for the adorable factor, someone with strong political beliefs is behind the creation I sure. Nonetheless, I’d vote!

Toddler Gives Political Speech.

Musical Entertainment –

According to Wikipedia, the very first video to have ever been aired on MTV was by the Buggles titled “Video Killed the Radio Star”. If only the writers could see us now.

Would the Buggles sing “mobile phones killed the computers at home” now?

Historical Purposes –

Using an image a day for 21 years, this video is currently a trending sensation. A father decided to photograph his son every day and at 21 yrs old, he puts together a great video.

Trending now, The History of a Boy!

Dating –

Because sometimes a profile picture just isn’t enough, check out a video! Although this was made a few years back, many people are doing the same, making and posting videos to give better representations of who they are.

This guy has a lot going for him! Good news too is that his video was a success!

Pets –

Gigaom just recently blogged about the popularity of cat videos and I’m pretty certain I could watch some of these all day.  The writer introduces the thought that we are finally beginning to put more structure around those pet videos which, in my opinion, it shows that we are no longer just capturing cute but creating good content. Nonetheless, here’s a very popular feline trending right now. The author, has won a few awards but a grand audience with over 5 million views for his Henri 2, Paw de Deux!

Henri 2, Paw de Deux, oh the torment!

Educational –

I really didn’t know it was so easy to find a “How To” video help learn how to do pretty much anything. I’ve never milked a cow, so I thought I’d learn. Point is, this a pretty trendy way to gain knowledge or know how about topics it seems, videos! Check out HowCast.com if you’re looking to learn.

Do you know how?

Show boaters & Stunts –

Everything from trampoline stunts, to magic tricks to unicyclists gets filmed and shared. Let’s face it, many a motion picture movie has been based on antics caught on film. But just recently, one these daredevil cyclists was nominated 4^th place at UNICOM 16 World Championship!

Congrats Kevin Kartchner!

Happy videoing and viewing.

By definition, UGC is digital content that has been created by users or subscribers of a specific site or service online such as social media sites, blogging sites, image sharing sites, video sharing sites, forums and any company site that allows commenting or sharing. Content can be generated and uploaded by computers, smartphones or other mobile devices like pads or laptops.

Due to the explosion of the internet and the accessibility of the internet via mobile technologies, I think its fair to say UGC has taken on a whole different role than it had even 5 yrs ago. Simply, it’s just easier to create and upload, or snap and share somewhere.

Here are the choices we have for constructing content for online: Texual, Video, Images and a combination of them all.

UGC-Textual – Words only shared on a site, service or via mobile devices.

A Twitter post – I created this Tweet a few days ago. It was simply text in nature but in order to share it here, it appears as an image. Does this make it textual or an image? An image of text.

• Can ImageVision distinguish between the two, of course.

Cybersecurity tip for Friday! Customize your privacy settings on your social media accounts! Know who can see what, especially your pics!

— EyeGuardian (@EyeGuardian) October 12, 2012

Another example of text UGC -

A snapshot of a section of one of our press releases. Published throughout the internet, but only ever in text form.

• Can ImageVision’s visual recognition pick out a specific phrase or word within text?  Of course.

An example of textual UGC sent via mobile smartphones.

We keep hearing that images bring more attention to an idea and perhaps that’s why we are sharing so many across the Internet.

Aside of just snapping and uploading a photo, images can be manipulated many ways to add emphasis or grab the attention of more viewers. While not all subject matter is acceptable for all audiences, image manipulations aren’t always acceptable either. But, we’ll cover the problems with User-Generated Content in a later blog.

Below are examples of images as UGC.

This image was taken with a mobile device and then uploaded to the Internet immediately without modifications.

• Can visual recognition engines detect if the bodies in a photo are wearing clothes? ImageVision’s engines can! 5 great looking guys with 5 great looking suits!

This image was created on a computer adding text on top of the image and then uploaded.

• Can ImageVision’s visual recognition tell the difference between what words are on an image, for instance inappropriate language that has been added or is within an image? Yes, our visual recognition engine can search for text, and then specific text within an image.

This is an image created from two other images. Our ImageVision logo was placed on top of an image of a whiteboard.

• Does the ImageVision engine detect things like logos within pictures or does it have to be just a picture of a logo only? Our engines are trained to find whatever we want them to find. The technology will be able to find this logo within this image and anywhere else the logo is, even if its been stretched or skewed!

Finally, as discussed before, UGC also exists as videos.

This video was professionally produced but then shared as UGC by yours truly for social media purposes!

• Can ImageVision scan every scene within a video? Yes, our engines can scan for like scene sets and then scan for content. Not just the first minute of a video. We designed our engine to be able to handle all of a video so that no one places anything inappropriate within a video that may be missed by human moderators.

Just your common YouTube uploaded video, but it was created with a smartphone and then uploaded in about 3 minutes for sharing.

Concerning user-generated content, whether subscribing to a video only site or an advice blog or just sending a picture of your cat via your smartphone, if you are creating something and sharing it, you are one of the 82.5 million content creators out there and someone else is consuming what you create.

How and where?

Facebook hits the 1 Billion user mark early this month (after this infographic was published) and 350 million of those users are logging in from mobile phones. When logged in, those users are sharing 3,000 images per second.

Instagram has approximately 14 million users with 60 photos uploaded per second and Flickr retains 51 million users with those folks sharing 52 pictures per second.

Vimeo sees around 65 million unique monthly visitors and 700 videos are shared across the Twitosphere ever minute.

I’m responsible for several pieces just this morning, I was on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and now this blog and who knows where else I will be by lunch!

How much content are you generating and consuming?

Source: CopyPress



The psychologist who led the study stated that men and women see things differently due to cultural differences and this idea makes explaining the “Whos” and “Whys” of the ImageVision visual search and recognition technology pretty easy.

The Who: Anyone who is involved with the visual digital world.
The current state of the digital and technological culture that we participate in has made image taking and sharing extremely fast and easy with billions and billions of images landing on smartphones, tablets and computers.

The Why: Because some things shouldn’t be shared.
Every person with image viewing capability can understand that there is good image content and bad image content. While I like seeing pictures of my friend’s kiddo in their online albums, I don’t like seeing images of their kiddo’s middle finger sticking up with bad language painted underneath it.

Here at the ImageVision office, we develop technology to help businesses; enterprises, mobile phone manufacturers, social media networks, and service providers address problematic image content and do so at the “Speed of Social”.

So while men are recognizing motorcycles and women are recognizing birds, our engines are recognizing pornographic, illicit, explicit or illegal content. Our culture at this office is made up of a great team of scientists and developers studying the very curvature, tones, textures, angles, backgrounds, shapes, forms and other mathematical qualities that make up all forms of questionable content.

The goal: To make this bad content recognizable easily enough to be dealt with instantly. Ahhh visual recognition at its finest!

As Vanderbilt University’s psychologist Isabel Gauthier stated, “Everyone is born with a general ability to recognize objects and the capability to get really good at it.” Our computer vision was born with the ability to detect various forms of inappropriate visual content, and we are really good at it. I’d rather look for birds anyhow and leave the questionable content to Filter man.

Many thanks to the Metroplex Technology Business Council for awarding our very own CEO of ImageVision, Steven White as Emerging Company CEO at this year’s Annual Tech Titan Awards! We are both honored and humbled to accept such a recognition.  As a company, we couldn’t be more proud of our CEO and offer our own company wide congratulations! Whether smartphone, laptop, tablet or any other digital image sharing device, Mr. White will change the world, one image and video at a time.

“Steven White’s career and passion revolve around online security and contextual content delivery. His innovative approach to the control and visibility of online content led to the creation of a visual recognition, image and video filtering technology that has market applications for enterprise, mobile and social networking.”

– Metroplex Technology Business Council (MTBC)

Congratulations Also to Tech Wildcatters! Another important accolade is for Gabriella Draney with the Tech Wildcatters startup accelerator organization. Tech Wildcatters helped and continues to help launch ImageVision to bring the best in visual security solutions to the world. Congratulations Gabriella and many heartfelt “thank yous” for all you do.

Founded in 2009, Tech Wildcatters is a seed stage incubator that has developed a successful model in its quest to build the early-stage tech community in Dallas. Working with highly-motivated young entrepreneurs who have a modest amount of equity capital, Tech Wildcatters provides seed funding, intensive top-notch mentorship, and the opportunity for these young entrepreneurs to pitch their company to angel investors, venture capitalists, and corporate development teams.

- Metroplex Technology Business Council (MTBC)

Did you know that ImageVision can detect the subject matter within images and videos for explicit content? Did you know that we could do this identification in real-time so when people are uploading and posting pornographic content, our software can put the brakes on? Want more information about how ImageVision is changing the world one image or video scene at a time, give me a call, I’ll gladly share with you about our game-changing methods. If you just want to give us a “Like” us on Facebook to express your support, we would love to hear from you!

Via: Online Psychology Degree

It’s no shocker that as of August 14, 2012, “sexting” is now in the Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. Statistics are ever-growing relating to “ the sending of sexually explicit messages or images by cell phone” as are the societal concerns about the implications thereof, but I think the world is still floundering when it comes how easy it is to point-click-share anything.

According to a recent Infographic titled “The Truth About Teen Sexting” and published by  www.uKknowKids.com, 86% of those who sext are never caught and 55% of those who pass the sexts on to others, do so with more than one person! See the Infographic below for more stats, but it’s more than just a fad as some are calling it.

The questions surrounding this sexual texting are always “Why do sexters want to share so much?” and “How can we prevent the damage from this digital self destruction?”

The “Why” as touched on by Wikipedia.org is in below below, but the “how to protect them” isn’t as easy. Sure we can spot check phones and try behavioral instruction, but, if these methods truly were fixing the problem, my guess would be the term wouldn’t have been entered into the dictionary this week and there wouldn’t be current ongoing legislation around who snapped what and who is possessing what on his/her phone.

Sociology

“Sexting is a result of advances in technology enabling new forms of social interaction. Messages with sexual content have been exchanged over all forms of historical media. Newer technology allows sending pictures, and videos, which are intrinsically more explicit and have greater impact, without the involvement of photo printing personnel, or the need of a photo processing dark room at home (just like when using an instant camera, but even easier and less expensive)…”

We at ImageVision are doing our best to help put an end to the problem, but until we are on every smartphone and tablet, feel free to share your best tips and practices for preventing sexting.

Congratulations to our CEO Steven White of ImageVision for being recognized as one of the Top 40 Under 40! Recently, my faithful leader was recognized before his peers, as well as before his community, for achieving great success in his career based on “business accomplishments, community involvement and significant career milestones.”

Here at ImageVision, we are truly proud of Mr. White and appreciate his work, dedication and solutions as both employees and parents! This award shows yet another professional recognition to a thorough job at protecting the online and mobile worlds from the worst threats. While doctors have medicine, teachers have curriculum and attorneys have laws, the Internet and smartphone worlds have Steve. Sound corny, hardly, and here’s why:

ImageVision has online and mobile solutions able to identify the worst content abuses out there without discrimination as to the site or type of business. For companies with an online presence that allow user-generated content, we are able to help identify illicit or illegal content inappropriately place that may cause suit against them.  For image or video sharing sites, there is the identification against illegally placed images and identification against pornographic content within videos with both images and videos able to be moderated at unbelievable rates, milliseconds if you will, saving these sites large expenses for sorting through good and bad content. For advertisers, the content that is associated next to an ad can be more detrimental than NOT advertising. Major brands don’t want their brands being associated with illegal content. Now imagine the subscribers that join social media sites. While their goals may be signing up for games, making friends and sharing posts, imagine if the subscriber is a child and the child lands on a page with pornographic content. Taking down the content a week later isn’t helping anyone because the wrong population has already seen it and the damage has been done. Finally, mobile phones now have the protection needed against illicit content shared between children no matter whose idea it was originally.

Our digital lives have been changed for the better and although it’s not the kind of technology that sits on the front page yelling to the world it’s there, it’s the kind of technology that you want to know is there. It’s visual insurance, visual protection and scientific brilliance!

Congratulations Mr. White from your team, your peers, and your community, we all feel safer already!

Feel free to Tweet us (@ImageVisionLabs @EyeGuardian @imageguardian) or stop by our Facebook page to leave a congratulatory thumbs up, after all, YOUR images, videos and mobile phones need his protection too!