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Smile. You're on Carnival's Candid Camera
By Judi Janofsky & Rich Steck Having worked in the cruise industry in a previous life, we've had the pleasure of taking a lot of cruises. While each may have been different in size, itinerary and style, they all had one thing in common. The ubiquitous photographer, camera always ready, taking lots of photos of you around the ship and on the gangway. While some folks shy away from the camera, we never did. Maybe because we're always looking for that one "great photo" of the two of us that continually eludes us. So we pose. And pose. And pose. Wherever and whenever we get the chance. Easy enough, right? Well, yes, the posing is. But the hard part is the next day when you have to look through the hundreds of photos taken of all the other passengers to find ours in the ship's photo gallery. Often, we just gave up. (Actually we figure we must have looked pretty bad and the photographer never put them out.) This must have been a problem for other passengers as well, because last month, Carnival Cruise Lines, always an innovator, began testing a new photo-retrieval kiosk system. Featuring "facial recognition technology," the kiosk scans your face, then matches it with all the stored photos taken by the photographers. Your photos are then displayed on a monitor. You can even customize them a bit by adding a colorful border or background - all done on the touch-screen monitor. Finished? Touch a button and voila! out comes a print. Fast, easy and fun. While "facial recognition technology" is being used in other industries, most recently for security purposes, this is the first time it's been tested on a cruise ship - in this case Carnival's new 2,124-passenger Miracle. More than three football fields long and encompassing 12 passenger decks, Carnival Miracle offers a wide variety of amenities and features, including a 14,500-square-foot health club, indoor and outdoor promenades, a children's play room, a wedding chapel, Internet cafe and a duty-free shopping mall. Dining options include a two-level main dining room, an expansive poolside restaurant offering breakfast, lunch and dinner buffets and a 24-hour pizzeria, an upscale reservations-only supper club, a patisserie and complimentary 24-hour stateroom service. Sixteen lounges and bars, with dramatic interiors inspired by fictional icons of film, literature, theatre and song, are featured, as well. Of the ship's 1,062 staterooms, 80 percent offer an ocean view with 80 percent of those featuring private balconies. To find out more about the Carnival fleet, visit www.Carnival.com. For more about "facial recognition technology," check out ImageWare Systems at www.iwsinc.com. |
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