Automatic Image Tagging

1 . A method of automatic tagging of images on an image hosting website, comprising:

receiving at least one image;

locating faces and/or people in the received image;

recognizing features of the located faces and/or people; and

automatically tagging the located faces and/or people in response to the recognizing.

2 . The method of claim 1 , wherein uploading at least one image includes:

accessing the image hosting website;

selecting the at least one image at a computer apparatus in operative communication with the image hosting website; and

uploading the at least one image, from the computer apparatus, to the image hosting website.

3 . The method of claim 2 , wherein the computer apparatus is a personal digital assistant (PDA), a personal computer, a cellular telephone, a notebook computer, or a portable computing device.

4 . The method of claim 1 , wherein further comprising:

retrieving image tag information associated with a user owning the received image;

generating a cropped image stream of the received image for each tag associated with the image tag information;

identifying locations of faces within the cropped image stream; and

generating a facial identification record (FIR) for each identified location.

5 . The method of claim 4 , further comprising:

retrieving image tag information associated with a user owning a plurality of uploaded images;

generating cropped image streams of each uploaded image for each tag associated with respective image tag information;

identifying locations of faces within the cropped image streams; and

generating a facial identification record (FIR) for each identified location.

6 . The method of claim 1 , wherein locating the faces and/or people includes:

retrieving image tag information associated with a user owning the received image;

generating a cropped image stream of the received image for each tag associated with the image tag information; and

identifying locations of faces within the cropped image stream.

7 . The method of claim 1 , wherein locating features of the located faces and/or people includes:

generating a FIR for each located face.

8 . The method of claim 1 , wherein automatically tagging the located faces and/or people includes:

providing proposed tags and locations of faces to a user owning the received image through a user interface; and

receiving an approval status for each proposed tag and location from the user.

9 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

notifying a distribution server of the received image;

determining a processing capacity of a recognition server in operative communication with the image hosting website in response to the notifying;

queuing processing of the received image at the recognition server in response to the determining.

10 . The method of claim 9 , wherein determining the processing capacity of the recognition server includes accessing a work item queue size of the recognition server, the work item queue size being directly related to both currently processing images and queued images for processing.

11 . The method of claim 9 , wherein if the received image is a first in a series of uploaded images from a user owning the uploaded images, determining a capacity of a drone recognition server, the drone recognition server being a back up recognition server disposed to handle image processing distributed from a central image processing distribution server.

12 . The method of claim 9 , wherein if the received image is not the first in a series of uploaded images from a user owning the uploaded images, queuing processing of the uploaded image to a drone recognition server already processing the series of uploaded images.

13 . A system of automatic tagging of images on an image hosting website, comprising:

a user terminal;

the image hosting website in operative communication with the user terminal, the image hosting website disposed to receive images uploaded from the user terminal;

a recognition server in operative communication with the image hosting website, the recognition server disposed to receive images from the image hosting website and to process and automatically tag the received images; and

an image upload server in operative communication with the image hosting website, the image upload server disposed to store automatically tagged images received from the image hosting website.

14 . The system of claim 13 , wherein the recognition server includes:

a distribution server in operative communication with the image hosting website, the distribution server disposed to distribute images received from the image hosting website; and

a plurality of drone recognition servers in operative communication with the distribution server, each drone recognition server configured to process, locate, and recognize facial features of images received from the distribution server.

15 . The system of claim 13 , further comprising a FIR database in operative communication with the recognition server, the FIR database disposed to store a plurality of facial identification records associated with the images received from the image hosting website.

16 . The system of claim 13 , wherein the recognition server is disposed to implement a method, comprising:

locating faces and/or people in an image received from the image hosting website; and

recognizing features of the located faces and/or people.

17 . A computer readable storage medium containing computer executable instructions that, if executed by a computer processor of a computer apparatus, direct the computer processor to implement a method of automatic tagging of images on an image hosting website, the method comprising:

receiving at least one image;

locating faces and/or people in the received image;

recognizing features of the located faces and/or people; and

automatically tagging the located faces and/or people in response to the recognizing.

18 . The computer readable storage medium of claim 17 , wherein the method further comprises:

retrieving image tag information associated with a user owning the received image;

generating a cropped image stream of the received image for each tag associated with the image tag information;

identifying locations of faces within the cropped image stream; and

generating a facial identification record (FIR) for each identified location.

19 . The computer readable storage medium of claim 18 , wherein the method further comprises:

retrieving image tag information associated with a user owning a plurality of uploaded images;

generating cropped image streams of each uploaded image for each tag associated with respective image tag information;

identifying locations of faces within the cropped image streams; and

generating a facial identification record (FIR) for each identified location.

20 . The computer readable storage medium of claim 17 , wherein locating the faces and/or people includes:

retrieving image tag information associated with a user owning the received image;

generating a cropped image stream of the received image for each tag associated with the image tag information; and

identifying locations of faces within the cropped image stream.