Koda-Vision

In an event in New York City in April, Eastman Kodak uncharacteristically discussed some of the cutting-edge work in its research labs. The work centers around making use of artificial intelligence in images -- developing software, for instance, that automatically recognizes faces or sorts images by decade. You can see a video about this subject at this site here.

Turns out that Kodak may be in a race to perfect the technology with the hottest name in dot-coms. Google this week purchased a small company called Neven Vision, which specializes in technology for automatically extracting information from a photo. Word is Google will use the technology with its Picasa photo software, which is available free to Google users. The purchase is getting some attention among the bloggers, such as this one.