USC researcher Hartmut Neven has developed software that can do facial recognition on your cell phone using the built-in camera. While the LAPD is already using this technology to nab suspects based on mugshots, Neven has a much grander idea for the future of the technology.

A nice rollout example would be a movie guide. If you see a billboard of a movie on a bus, you take a shot of it [using your cameraphone] and then are routed to a relevant site where you can download a trailer or get show times. All we would need are images of a couple hundred billboards. The same is true with the Louvre example, where a collection of images already exists. With our technology, it doesn’t take an expert to train the system to recognize an object.

In other words, Neven wants people to be able to use cameras to google the world. See an interesting restaraunt? Just photograph it and see what comes up…