iPhone News Updated

IPhone App Rates Users’ Ugliness

IPhone App Rates Users’ Ugliness

A new iPhone application, which rates a person’s physical “unattractiveness” by analyzing photos of the face, is climbing up Apple’s app store rankings.

The program, called “Ugly Meter,” allows users to take photos of faces and then, supposedly, analyzes the facial structure to deliver an “ugliness” score — on a 10-point scale, with the highest score corresponding to the ugliest face.

Along with the rating, the app generates a comment — “You’re so hot that you make the sun jealous” for a score of 2, as well as “You’re so ugly, when you walk by the bathroom, the toilet flushes” for a perfect 10.

Developed by a team calling themselves the “Dapper Gentlemen,” the Gilbert, Ariz.-based group aimed to create a light-hearted app.

“We’ve done some serious games in the past and just wanted to do something funny,” said Eugene Overline, co-owner and lead programmer of Dapper Gentlemen. “You take it out and you won’t get your phone back for an hour.”

The programmers based their facial analysis on real findings that connect symmetry to perceptions of physical beauty.

“There are some measurements that are official definitions for how beauty is created,” Overline said. “The app does its best to attempt to measure those different points of symmetry on the face.”

But Overline added that true facial-definition scanning software requires three-dimensional images, so the analysis of the face from an iPhone photo is incomplete.

“We took the aspects that we could integrate into the computer program,” Overline said. “It’s accurate enough to be fun.”

But while the developers created the app for fun, some worry that it could be used by cyber-bullies.

“If you’re 25, 26 or 28, this sort of thing could be quite funny or amusing,” said Stephen Balkam, CEO of the Family Online Safety Institute. “But in the hands of a 14- or 15-year-old, it could be quite the reverse, and particularly if someone is submitting someone else’s photograph and then circulated that photo around school.”

The Ugly Meter currently sits in the top ten of Apple’s app store, making more than $10,000 over the previous weekend.

“It’s pretty much a lottery with the App Store,” said Overline. “If you come up with a gimmicky thing, it could take off. Top apps are making over $100,000 a day.”

If the app continues to go viral, Overline and his team could indeed be sitting pretty on revenue generated from sales of Ugly Meter.

[Thanks: http://www.mobiledia.com]

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