Riya Alpha release second update
So been testing Riya's Alpha release for a while now. To say the least, things have improved compared to the last release (this is obvious, you would expect that won't you? ). There are few things I will like to comment on here starting with Uploader.
Uploader:- Uploader is a tool that uploads the photos from the desktop computers to the Riya web server. I like the new uploader, why? At least it shows me how many pictures are uploaded and how the progress is going. I can stop the uploads and start them again. The average time it takes the uploader to stop now is nearly 2 minutes after I press the "Stop upload" button. Although I understand that it needs to process the existing image that it's uploading and complete few other things that it might be doing, in the long run I would say that this is not acceptable really. Stop/pause should stop the things immediately.
The uploader uses Java and javaw.exe process eats nearly 50-60% of my processing power and more than 100 MB of RAM at times. Again in the long run not really acceptable. I did uninstall Google Desktop Search as it was just taking too long to index my hard disk and was slowing my system down.
Why doesn't Riya just upload the pictures and do the processing at their end? I know it will be resource intensive but better experience for the users.
But overall, the uploader seems to be doing what it is supposed to do.
Face Recognition:- I find the overall website to be a bit faster than last time, not sure how true that is. Face recognition process has improved. Now I am getting more sets of photos that I can tag at once which is good and less time consuming.
Tagging faces without putting their email address on a mandatory basis reduces the time it takes me to tag the faces and improves my overall experience. I can always put the email address later in the address book. A note for Riya developers (you guys can show tips on a regular basis as to why it is advisable to put email addresses).
Although on the face recognition itself I think lot more needs to be done. Of the 2000+ images I have uploaded to Riya so far ( my computer was just too busy uploading other stuff ) I have trained Riya very well for at least mine and my wife's images. I have trained Riya 112+ (that is lot of training I think) plus for my wife's photos and it still fails to recognise all of the pictures of my wife. And come on my wife's pics hasn't changed that much in last two years (that is when most of the pictures are from). So that side needs to be improved.
The another thing is system fails to differentiate male from female. I will give you an example in the picture below. There are few more that I came across while training the system.
Again as a user, I am not interested into algorithms, but just the result that I get :).
Menu Problem:- If you see the picture below, it's painful to scroll down the list of people when I am nearly at the bottom of the browser window. In such situations, the drop down box should be smart enough to pop themselves up on the top side of the window.
Excuse me if I am too harsh, I remember it's an alpha release! But want this system to be as good as possible so more people can realise the beauty of such a service. But overall I am happy Riya's system is shaping up. Word 'Excellent' goes out to Mario (he listens to me complaining things about Riya). I think he's a great asset to Riya. The best thing about him is he understands the problem in really less words and even when I am not really able to explain it properly. Some good signs for a technical support person.
Update:- I had few other questions which I did not mention here as they are already covered on Riya blog at http://blog.riya.com.
Technorati Tags: Riya, photosearch, tools, soalphaithurts

