The face is your password

When Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks) in the film Castaway returns home after spending four years on a lonely island, his girlfriend Kelly (Helen Hunt) recognises him in spite of his long-hair and beard and other physical changes that made him an alien to his own men.

But things go differently for Saif Ali Khan when he returns home from a lonely island. Neither his wife nor his pet dog recognise him due to his unkempt look. And then he takes the help of his new Lenovo Y series notebook with face recognition technology to establish his identity.

This 40-second TV commercial for Lenovo's Y300 and Y500 notebook ranges was shot at a small island near Mumbai by director Rajesh Krishnan to popularise the Lenovo Y series with the 'face recognition technology'.

The television commercial with the tagline 'makes your face your password' is being aired on all national television channels starting Thursday last week.

The inbuilt camera on the Lenovo Y300 and Y500 notebooks is supported by Veriface software that scans the user's face horizontally and vertically before taking a digital snapshot of the user. The digital snashot extracts the key features of the user's face and creates a digital map which can be used as the system's password.

"Once you log into the system, the machine can recognise your face automatically, thus allowing you to access your personal documents and mails. This will also prevent somebody trying to hack into your system," said Ajay Mittal, vice president, brand and marketing, Lenovo India.

He said that even the same face can be used as password for accessing the mails and the face recognition technology can be used for multiple users as well.

"To access mail, a user needs to create a registry file. The inputs of applications used by him and the passwords can be put in the registry to allow the user to use his face as the password," said Anil Joseph Phillip, director, Transaction Business Unit, Lenovo India.

Already launched in China and some South-east Asian countries, the Y300 and Y500 are in the range of Rs 32,000-70,000. The company plans to use multiple channels like television, print, Internet and partners to popularise the products.

"We will adopt a 360-degree marketing strategy by reaching 3.6 million people through the new television ad, 5.3 million people through print advertisement and 4 million through Internet advertisement," said Rahul Agarwal, general manager, marketing, Lenovo India.

This is part of its strategy to reach out to tier-III cities in India. Lenovo is now present in 297 cities with the help of its channel partners. Besides, the company plans to increase its dealer network from 940 to 1,175 by the end of financial year 2006-07.

Want to discuss computer software? Join the Computer software Discussion Group