One of the major drawbacks in my life is that, while I am a tip-top programmer, I don't have the mad math skillz I wish I did. I've got some great ideas, but without a PHD in quantum algebra or something, I just don't have the mathematical knowledge to pull them off.
The one thing I'd really like to see in software is an automated face detection and recognition program that would help me sort through my pictures.
Here's how it would work. Much like Google's Picasa 2 (which I am very impressed with), a process would catalogue every image it could find. Upon picking up an image, a facial detection routine would be run. If faces are detected, then the image is processed for recognition. If the face(s) found do not match anything in the database, the image is flagged to say this person needs to be identified.
Since this is something that runs off of still images, it should be slightly easier than trying to track faces in real time from video. I know the algorithms exist out there, but again I don't understand the underlying math enough to modify them for my needs.
Any super geniuses out there think they could do something like that?