In case you forget what your friends look like, your Android (News - Alert) phone can now recognized them for you. This week, a Palo Alto, California-based start-up company called Viewdle released software that lets Android-powered smartphones recognize people's faces. The company's app, called SocialCamera, is free in the Android Market. The company is calling it the first of its kind for U.S. smartphone users.

“Viewdle SocialCamera is the first mobile camera app to encourage socializing and communication,” said Viewdle co-founder and chief executive Laurent Gil. “Consumers can now instantly share their photos based on who appears in them.”

SocialCamera uses computer algorithms to create “faceprints” that people can tag (News - Alert) with names and store in smartphones. The software then matches faceprints to subjects in subsequent photos. Android smartphones can then instantly connect names to those in photos and share the images with those involved using social networking service Facebook (News - Alert); photo-sharing Web site Flickr, or by e-mail or instant message.

SocialCamera was billed as the first in a line of facial-recognition software applications aimed at the consumer market. The company owes its rise to tech investors, who have ponied up $10 million worth of investment into the company. The influx of cash came from Qualcomm, BlackBerry Partners Fund, U.S. electronics retail chain Best Buy (News - Alert), and Anthem Venture Partners, an investment firm that has backed Viewdle from the outset.

“We are giving smartphones human eyes,” Gil told AFP in an interview when the funding was announced. “Letting them see the world the way people do... it is artificial intelligence,” he said. “It is happening.”

Viewdle bills itself as the leading independent facial recognition company for consumer gadgets. Its technology is developed by the company's research team in the Ukraine. Viewdle is the result of 15 years of research, rooted in work done at The Cybernetics Institute in Kiev, and got its first infusion of investor money – $2.5 million – in June 2008.

Android users can find SocialCamera in the Android Market or on Viewdle's Web site at www.viewdle.com/products/mobile.