The killer app of the decade got closer yesterday with Facebook's acquisition of face.com.
The combination makes possible the holding up of a smartphone towards a person and getting a read-out identifying that person and their biographical details.
Facebook is the largest repository on the planet of peoples' photographs. face.com has the visual recognition technology to recognise an individual face in a photo or video and put a name to it.
Face.com has an app in the Apple Apps store called Klik which shows you pictures of people to whom you are connected on Facebook with their personal details.
Face.com has licensed its technology, called Photo Finder, to 5000 developers who are building applications allowing you to search for anyone who has a photo posted on the Internet.
"You can search for people in any photo - on Flikr, in newspapers, or in videos on YouTube - but it would take a lot of processing power," according to face.com founder and CEO Gil Hirsch.
The face.com software reduces the measurements and characteristics of a face to an algorithm which can be compared to any photo.
Facebook users upload 300m photos every day to the site.
The value of the acquisition was not disclosed.
