Too Hip to Blip or a tale of two faces

I have long been wary about getting drawn into the debate about facial comparisons concerning the erstwhile Sir Paul McCartney, largely because there are so many variables to be factored in that it becomes impossible to ever achieve a definitive conclusion.

However, I have decided to dip my toes into these crocodile infested waters to bring you the results of a wee little experiment of mine.

Yesterday, whilst returning home from the drudgery that passes as gainful employment I read about a new development from the app-developers Blippar. Blippar, for the uniniated, is an augmented reality business (their words not mine) that has just launched a facial recognition tool.

So armed with my trusty iPhone and studiously ignoring the some what creepier aspects of this vast technological development I pondered how well it would recognise various images of our hero both pre and post-mortem, as it were.

As a useful guide, the ticks indicate a successful recognition whilst the crosses indicates a fail.

Curiously, it identified both James Paul and Faul (if you believe such labels) and even one of the bizarre hybrid portmanteau's of both as being Paul McCartney, whilst failing to do so with a number of others.

My conclusions, therefore: Facial comparisions are total bollocks and cannot be trusted and, whilst I accept this is far from scientific, are a complete and utter waste of time. However, if you are so minded to put store into such matters then our augmented reality friends may have just armed us with a very useful tool. As such I urge you to go and point your cameras at various images of the man(s) himself and see what you can reveal, after all, who knows what may be hiding in plain sight.