Presently in Japan, one of the hottest K-tai Web sites is Kaocheki, "Face checkie". Ah well, one of the silliest sites, I would say. By the way, you can't have access to this site unless you use a Japanese K-tai with Internet service (one of the three, i-mode, EZweb or Yahoo! K-tai).

Shoot your frontal self-portrait with K-tai camera, and send it to Kaocheki
site with e-mail. After a few seconds at most, the answer will come, telling you that you have certain percentage of resemblance to certain Japanese celebrity. Well? Absolutely tasteless and ridiculous, isn' it?

But, Japanese K-tai users obviously love this kind of tastelessness and ridiculousness very much. Since the start of Kaocheki site in April 2007, more than 30 million visitors have already tried it.

Kaocheki Web site. Take your self-portrait, then choose female/male/none, and send to the site.

Kaocheki maintains an image database of around 1,000 faces: Of Japanese singers, TV personalities, athletes and so on. Your self-portrait is analyzed with facial image-processing software and matched to the database.

The software, Face Sensing Engine (FSE) developed by Oki Electric Industry Co., has been widely utilized as a security authorization tool in Japan. Rather a decent piece of software, I guess.

The Kaocheki site is managed by a K-tai content outfit, J-Magic Inc.
of Tokyo. Because you have to see through a lot of advertisement, the service itself is totally free of charge and no cumbersome registration is necessary. Maybe this could be one of the reasons Kaocheki service is so popular to Japanese K-tai users.

Verdict came from Kaocheki to you. (Abridged translation: Accuracy not guaranteed) Welcome to Kaocheki service! Result of Kaocheki diagnosis - You have 68% resemblance to Bela Lugosi! Following three celebrities are chosen for you: * Bela Lugosi 68% * Godzilla 63% * Boris Karloff 60%

It seems J-Magic guys, too, love the silliness. Encouraged by the success of Kaocheki, they have started another totally useless service, in ollaboration with a gourmet Web site called HotPepperPockets.

The service, HotPepperCheki, returns an email to you, saying your face looks like a certain dish, such as "pizza face", "curry rice look", and "sushi-looking face".

Surely J-Magic/HotPepperPockes maintain a image database of hundreds of different dishes. But they have refused to reveal what kind of algorithm they use to get the resemblance quotient.

I'm afraid J-Magic will introduce some more useless services soon. For the worst cases,
comparing your face to viral RNA/DNA database, or even to natural/human-error disaster database.

Imagine:
"Your facial feature has some 68% resemblance to Hindenburg Hydrogen Fire, and 38% to Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004."

 

cheewee
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kaisei1
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