Analysing emotions

New Scientist magazine published an article this month about some new software which will analyse a photograph of a face, and rate its expression based on six primary emotions. It bases its assessment on an algorithm which takes into account lip curvature and eye crinkles, and these are compared against "neutral expressions" stored in a database.

Why would you want this? Well, one of the facets that has revolutionised the web has been personalisation. Amazon tailor their suggestions to you, based on things you have bought before, and the items you have searched on in the past. Imagine a machine that can analyse your mood based on your facial expression. Actually, it sounds like it could be really annoying, but the potantial is there, certainly.

. But what do they make of the most famous expression in history, Mona Lisa's enigmatic smile? Well, apparently, she was 83 per cent happy, 9 per cent disgusted, 6 per cent fearful and 2 per cent angry. Case closed, no more speculation.

(Thanks to Boing Boing).