
Online algorithmic event detection from realtime mobile photos - spolu
http://detectd.teleportd.com
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gstar
This is really incredible - I first heard of this when the Tottenham Court Rd
incident happened a few weeks ago in London, and teleportd had images and
detected the event before Sky News.

Well done guys! Really cool to see it launched.

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spolu
Thanks! You should check out the various commencements in NYC going on right
now :)

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smackfu
Now it just needs to learn that "commencement" and "graduation" are synonyms.

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spolu
haha! YESSSSS! :)

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dclowd9901
This is such a great idea. And imagine if first-hand reporting could be
confirmed using a tool like this.

There are so many interesting and potential uses from such a product.

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spolu
Thanks! we're still tweaking our algorithm to lower the number of false-
positives, but some news outlets already said they would indeed be interested
by having this kind of stuff!

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ljd
Congrats, in my humble opinion this looks like a game changing idea. I don't
see any reason why this can't become a legitimate news source or the visual
version of reddit where upvotes come from density ratings.

I'm pretty sure you've thought of this but if not here is some algorithm
advice: you should start recording baseline density referenced by time (maybe
use Fourier to detect time patterns?) so you can start filtering out the
noise. That way you can filter out the few thousand pictures of the Empire
State Building everyday unless something happens at the ESB in which case
density would dramatically increase relative to time.

Also, this would be great to see visually on a map where when you zoom farther
and farther in the clusters get redrawn so I can see micro events happening
within the major event.

Great job!

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WiseWeasel
I'm curious how things like "bootylicious" in San Francisco and what appear to
be mostly personal photos like "griffith observatory" in Los Angeles, and
perhaps artistic things like "lighting shadow" in San Francisco made the cut.
Is it that at least two different accounts posted photos with those tags in
the same general vicinity within a certain time elapsed?

Maybe it would help filter out less relevant results if events without any
photos featuring large groups or crowds of people are removed, since those
typically go hand-in-hand with notable events. If there could be a way to
separate out sporting and music events, that would be nice as well.

Prime featured content would be large groups of people in the streets, with
bonus points if there are things on fire. Another would be natural disasters
(floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis), which most likely do
not contain pictures of crowds in the streets, but probably do contain damaged
or flooded buildings. Another might be a disease outbreak, perhaps with
pictures of individuals with lesions or other visible symptoms, maybe in a
medical setting. War zone events like the shelling of a neighborhood somewhere
would be interesting, and might fall under the damaged building filter for
natural disasters. Maybe pictures of tanks or other heavy military equipment
rolling into a town, or helicopters flying overhead. UFO sightings. Pictures
of crashes and accidents are always popular as well, and might only have a few
emergency personnel around. Political events would probably fall under the
large crowd filter. What else?

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ragmondo
Isn't this what "Color" was supposed to do (amongst many other things that is)
?

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spolu
They probably said that once :)

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matthieurouif
I discovered pictures of this car entering the French metro through teleportd.
They had way more images than news website. I also love to teleport myself to
Rio and San Francisco where part of my family is.

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mcdillon
This is pretty awesome and its a great way to spark off additional analysis,
such as triggering precise twitter feed filters for a specific topic.

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loceng
Please don't sell to Facebook. You'll have more value being a de-centralized
company.

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spolu
Not on our TODO list yet!

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rberrehili
The power of technology! A laptop, some (a lot of) lines of code and here you
are!

Congrats guys! ;)

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maxjaderberg
really cool tech here! have you guys published any papers on this?

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spolu
Not yet but actually we're working on it. We hope to publish something before
end of 2012! Any idea on the good confs for such subject?

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maxjaderberg
Looking forward to it! Not sure for your subject, as I am computer vision guy.
In fact, I work on large scale image recognition and there is something about
this which I love...there's a lot of potential for image analysis here.

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leonbuchard
Is that Bono on the 4th photo ?

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gabhubert
That or a guy doing a seriously good face expression.

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ziends
great job

