These emoticons use your real face

Not sure this makes those emoticons any better really, but news this week from University of Pittsburgh researchers says they have developed a way to make e-mails, instant messaging, and texts more personalized. By using your actual face. Called Face Alive Icons , Xin Li, who developed the system and now works for Google, says the software will let people to use images of their own faces instead of the more traditional emoticons to communicate their mood. All that is needed is a photo of the person, preferably with a neutral expression. Then the user can upload the image from their camera phone or other device. Then, by keying in familiar text symbols, such as “:)” the Face Alive system warps a photo’s facial features to show everything from being happy to sad, angry, or surprised Li told the MIT Review. “Already, people use avatars on message boards and in other settings,” says Sheryl Brahnam, an assistant professor of computer information systems at Missouri State University, in Springfield in the MIT article. This system bridges the gap between emoticons and avatars. The researchers noted that these cartoon icons become so popular that they are encoded as the combinations of ASCII characters such as “:-)” for happiness and “:-(” for sadness, which are widely used within emails and short messages. The popularity of these cartoon face icons and character combinations has proven the great needs for facial expressions in numerous applications. However, neither of them can provide as natural and vivid expressions as the facial images of the real human.