Face Recognition, The Next Big Thing

"The thicker face the face, the harder the verification”

“Sorry…the machine doesn’t recognize ugly people.”

“A little make-up would help the machine.”

“You’re possibly not a human, access denied!”

“Sometimes it does matter if you’re black or white! Auwww!!” – MJ style certainly.

The R&D guys joked when the prototype failed to recognize faces back then. Some of them even suggested having these kinds of greetings in the machine, which obviously was shot down immediately by the more sane ones.

2 ＋ 3D Face Recognition Algorithm

Recognize this face?

Having our past experiences in the biometrics industry, gradually we had to diversify our research and development into other areas, and we choose to develop face recognition. The road to commercialization stumbled upon engineering and re-engineering of the 2＋3D face recognition algorithm. After myriads of denials from the marketing department over time, the overall outcome now is positive.

So, another market revolution can be expected, this time, led by face recognition.

According to a research report, face recognition would keep its status quo in between 16-18% for another 6 years, whereas fingerprint technology will slowly lost its momentum, from current market share of 55%, gradually declined to 31% in 2015 for a combination of private and public sector.

Ready For The Change

Of course, the market development might not always follow the forecast. Especially for high-tech products, if the time is ripe and the product is right, you have higher opportunity to change the world, or to prove expert’s projection is rather conservative or wrong.

This time, we are more than ready when come to term with the new biometric technology and market. We understand the customers better, more aware of their requirements, and the market acceptance would be easier, we reckon.

For instance, facial recognition is truly contactless when embed with one-to-many verification technology. Every time you want to gain an access, or to check in for attendance, what you need to do is just to stand before the reader, it will scan and verify; or flash an RFID card prior to the process if the reader is incorporated with RFID functionality.

Our Face Recognition Roadmap

FingerTec FaceID 2 (artist's impression)

FingerTec FaceID 2E (artist's impression)

We will introduce two new products simultaneously into the market before year end with a codename FaceID 2 and FaceID 2E respectively. The first, FaceID 2 would be a combination of fingerprint and face recognition technology, providing options for users either to use single method, or a combination depending on their security needs.

The latter, FaceID 2E, would be an external face recognition reader which can be plugged into FingerTec existing fingerprint reader models through USB port. (Note: Only apply to future batch of FingerTec reader models with USB port)

Standalone face recognition reader only without any fingerprint module, is also in our pipeline, schedule to be launched by 2010.

For our existing partners, prepare yourself for a shake-up in biometrics market. Please bear in mind that when opportunity knocks, you can either open your door or you can let it pass.

FingerTec once again will abide by our philosophy, to lowering the entry barrier and making high-tech products mass; and most importantly, our brand is tagged with an affordable price.

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ

TA100DIY, A Concept Realized

Salesforce.com, the world’s leading CRM (Customer Relation Management) system that we’re currently using, puts emphasize on “NO SOFTWARE” in their sales strategy.

No doubt, “NO SOFTWARE”, is more clear than if they were to use “Cloud Computing” technology term, which needs further elaboration and having no catchy punctual to actually ‘catch’ customers.

“No Software” is the fundamental

NO SOFTWARE. The same goes to TA100 DIY but it is not something related to “Cloud Computing”. TA100 DIY is simply NO SOFTWARE. It’s just like a smart phone; all the smart features are put together in one phone.

NO SOFTWARE. Offered at a competitive price yet loaded with superb features is what TA100 DIY all about; suits perfectly for SME and SMI.

“TCMS V2 is overtly too sophisticated for our small business. We only have a few staff, and we are not going to use some of the features. 'Overnight shift' for example, is of no use to us.” Commented some customers.

“TCMS V2 requires training. For small businesses that are tight in budget, they even want to save on small training fees.” Lamented some resellers.

TA100DIY, everything in one box

“Can we just sell the machine as cash-and-carry item and the customers do the rest by themselves?” Asked some idealistic resellers, a twinkle in their eyes.

Harder than we thought

When the first batch of TA100 DIY was introduced to the market a few months ago, some users started to rebuke, “I had to type long username to register users one by one with those small keypads. So inconvenience! The user has to punch some key first before they can put their finger, unlike the other models. No good too. The HTML reports have flaws, etc …” And the list extended.

And some users came back demanding us to ‘upgrade’ the DIY machine to become a normal machine with TCMS V2 software. We helped them downgraded the firmware, and we sent them TCMS V2 software (of course, with some charges involved).

The Will Lives On

But I did not back away from the lukewarm response, in fact I told my staff, the market has thousands times more small offices than large corporations or factories, and these offices will need time recorders to record their attendance. Simpler and cheaper Biometrics reader would suit their requirements better than the normal machine with software.

“If some percentage of these offices starting use our TA100 DIY, we will see much improvements in our sales.” I reiterated.

The R&D team later was instructed to gather customer’s feedbacks, refine the crude features, adding some new ones, and enhance the batch processing to import and export data and etc.

DIY is the Final Destination for TA100 DIY

For resellers, TA100 DIY can definitely help them to reduce training hours spent at end users. For tech-savvy end users, TA100 DIY should be a walk in the park. If you can operate your mobile phone, you can do TA100 DIY.

My aim is to make the DIY reader so simple, even housewives could use it in the house to check their husband’s IN and Out (go out and back home) movements. (And have records to prove it) :)

I bet on the DIY reader to be as successful as the rest of the models.

What’s next?

Of course, software will remain inevitable for all other FingerTec models including the ones we are going to produce in the future. We have also started the TCMS V2 web version development, which would involve cloud-computing technology, and eventually, our next milestone is to operate like Salesforce.com.

Stay tuned with FingerTec, interesting things keep happening.

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ

DIY Concept on FingerTec

My 8 years old daughter offered her helping hands to assemble the DIY (Do-it-yourself) bookshelf that I bought from IKEA. I was amused to see her first labored up, later down to an Allen Key using her two tiny hands to tighten the screw to no avail.

IKEA, do-it-yourself home furnishings

At IKEA, you pay and transport bare skeleton furniture home and fix it on your own.  To make you do part of their jobs has eventually made IKEA the world’s largest furniture manufacturer.  It’s called “mass collaboration” (to make the website owner gets rich) in Web 2.0 term. :)

This is the power of DIY.  

Only by DIY, IKEA manages to flat-pack and save much of their transportation costs and warehouse space. In flat-pack, large percentage of IKEA items can be stuffed in a sedan and driven home by customers.

But when FingerTec adopts the DIY concept, neither we want to flatten FingerTec readers (simply because we can’t), nor shifting the installation, setup, training and all the technical supports from the resellers to end users.

Our DIY concept is to lower the technical barriers for resellers and customers.

For resellers, you have almost everything to market and support the products with ease using our online resources.  For end users, you would find a lot easier to adopt FingerTec in your daily operations.

Our DIY concept including of the following efforts:

1.    The hardware and software should be easy to use and free from technical glitches.  Our Product Development and Quality Control teams well understood this objective.

QC:Burning test for 7 days

Manuals & Video Guides to be packed into every individual product

2.     Step-by-step video guide with user manual for users.  To reduce training and support costs. Failure rate to adopt fingerprint device is lowered down to the minimum.

3.  Step-by-step video clips for hardware repair. Do not need to return the faulty machine to us; resellers DIY and save on transport cost.

4.   Localization. Have you ever seen any fingerprint products that provide standard local language? We have over 20 languages for hardware and 14 for software. Our sales team can speak 10 different languages.

5.   Marketing materials? Plenty in softcopies or hardcopies.  To help you to sell in no time. My Indonesian partner once told Norana, “I beat one veteran in fingerprint business by just showing the management a few FingerTec marketing videos without much talking, and I secured the project.”

6.     Training? Of course. Online. Most of our resellers worldwide self-trained by tapping on our training resources.

7.     Extended technical support to end-users.  Our system helps resellers to support end-users. Any technical query from users that write to support@fingertec.com will get our direct response within 24-hour, it is inconvenience to route them back to their vendor, unless specified so by certain resellers.  An end-user technical website http://user.fingertec.com is established for users to self-help themselves for any technical problems.

8.   We have designed and redesigned our packaging to reduce the packaging size and weight, to be environment-friendly and fit just fine to protect products and to save transportation cost. That’s IKEA! 

IKEA DIY concept is reversing a supposedly full-assembled furniture to bare bones in a smart way.  A lot of customers don’t mind the troubles; to them it’s fun to assemble a table or a chair.

But for Hi-tech equipment, it is no fun. The lesser you do, the more troubles customers have to bear. We have to shoulder them all to lower the threshold, to make the sophisticated products become simpler and easier to use.  And, it works! We have sold FingerTec products to clients in over 90 countries in the world, and far more than IKEA. (Revenue wise can’t be compared-lah. We are like toaster; they are apples. People eat apples everyday.)

This is the power of DIY.

Many may argue that FingerTec makes things easy, but not really DIY, and customers still have to engage installer or vendor to help them to get the machine up and running.

“Can I just buy FingerTec on the shelf and make it work on my own?”

I take the challenge from there and now TA100 DIY is the answer.

TA100DIY, the front page packaging design

(To be continued in my next article: “TA100 DIY, A Concept Realized”).

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ

Dali & TCMS V2: Unveiling New Version

Who is Salvador Dali? The Chief Programmer of TCMS V2?

Very unlikely.  We didn’t hire any Spanish to do our software, it’s costly, I reckon.

He was an artist, a surrealist painter. Born in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain, 1904, and died in 1989.

Then, what is the link between TCMS V2, Time & Attendance Software that bundled with FingerTec readers and he?

The logo.

A few years back, when we first designed the logo for the software, I gave the idea to absorb Dali's soft-watch painting concept, the graphic designer eventually produced the logo as follows:

Dali employed extensive symbolism in his works.  For instance, the hallmark “soft watches” that first appeared in The Persistence of Memory adopted Einstein’s theory that time is relative and not fixed. For better understanding of time in E=mc2 equation, you may refer to Stephen Hawking’s “The Brief History of Time”. (Frankly, I struggled and only managed to understand the first two chapters)  

Here I show you some of Salvador Dali’s interesting surreal paintings:

Time is fixed, time is an essence, and punctuality is important (at least in most part of the world). Rush hour traffic, 10 o’clock appointment, 3 o’clock meeting, so on and so forth. This is time in business world.

But time is meaningless when there is no life form in this universe.  Time only appears when life began. When life is gone, seeped into eternity, time becomes static. This is time in philosophers’ world.

“Time is not important, only life is important.” This is the famous phrase in the movie “The Fifth Element”.

We created a verse in our TA100 poster, “When mankind starts to time, the value tends to multiply”.  It conveys the idea that time is not worth as much when nobody cares, therefore when you are timed, it is important to add value to yourself to make your time more valuable.

A lifetime is so short, shouldn’t one live a more valuable life?  How to manage time to create value, the value that meaningful to you, and to the society? That’s very much dependant on one’s perception and his or her inclination. As long as this is the value that you pursue, it may end up with some meaning to you (but it may not, in the society’s perspective). You may spend one meaningful hour, but wasted the whole life. It’s relativity too.

Time is fixed, and time is relativity. And it’s a mixed of sense and sensibility, and also art and science. Just like the TCMS V2 soft watches logo (but according to my wife the painting looks like a woman’s ovaries system; I have no issues, it gives birth to life, it’s still a good thing), time is kind of floating in the air…

Now, FingerTec is unveiling the better and more efficient version of TCMS V2 (version 2.2) to spare some of your time to pursue what you wish in life.  

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ

The Blood Ties

I fed my father rice porridge in his sick bed. The out-of-character intimacy thrilled me.

He wanted to say something but his voice clattered at his throat.

A sudden stroke struck my father at the end of March brought me back to my hometown more often than usual.

Since I left home to pursue my degree, later started my career, and have a family of my own, I spent lesser times at my parents’ home in Melaka, despite it’s only 150km away from Kuala Lumpur.

I felt a twinge of guilt when I realized for the past 25 years I hardly looked back, and managed only very few Sundays a year to breakfast with my father at his favorite Dim Sum restaurant.

After knowing that his condition had stabilized, a month later I flew again, this time to Geneva, Switzerland to receive a Century International Quality Era Award.

The news about my father’s death hit me when I was strolling on the street of Geneva enjoying the cold Spring breeze, still wondering why none of the shopping mall is opened on Sunday.

Mr. Jose E. Prieto, the President of the Organizer is a nice guy, when heard of the news, expressed his condolence, and quickly arranged a special photo session to present the Award to me a day earlier from the official event, just before I left the hotel for Geneva Cointrin International Airport to hop on any available airplane to fly me back to Malaysia. Thanks to him.

I dislike the Chinese funeral rites tradition but still chose to abide. I lighted two white candles and joss sticks and burned silver papers, alongside with my siblings.

Hungry flames gobbled up the comfort-money like the money-crazed Cowhead and Horseface guards in the netherworld. Flakes of soot and ash drifted languidly in the solemn air. Hope to buy him a better afterlife.

The moment when his coffin was lowered into the crematorium, all the vivid images of the past suddenly swept over me. Him, still a radiant young man, cycled his favorite 4-year old to a movie; him, still a dedicated policeman, brought his obedient 5-year old to join his boring morning assembly; him, still a vigil night watchman, guarded the family and village through the race-riots in 1969; him, still in good appetite, chewed his favorite chicken legs in the Dim Sum restaurant; him, still sitting in his comfortable chair, smiled happily and toothlessly, when seeing his grown-up son came home with his daughter-in-law and grandchildren...

The mourners started to leave, but the blood ties stays forever and grows thicker by the day.

Melaka Memorial Park's Columbariums, where my father's ashes urn was placed.

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ

Moscow - To Thaw The Icy Reception

Influences of wars, wants, struggles and suffering are central to the history of Russia. After toppling the Tsars’ ruling, Stalin once remarked:

Old Russia … was ceaselessly beaten for her backwardness. She was beaten by the Mongolian khans. She was beaten by the Turkish beys. She was beaten by the Swedish feudal lords. She was beaten by the Polish-Lithuanian gentry. She was beaten by Anglo-French capitalists. She was beaten by the Japanese barons.

Can you believe? I took a photo with comrade Lenin (left) and Stalin (right) at Red Square.

Harsh in Weather and History

But not all Russia’s sufferings had came from outsiders as the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko (b. 1933) testified:

She was christened in childhood with a lash,

torn to pieces

Scorched.

Her soul was trampled by feet,

Inflicting blow upon blow,

Of Pechenegs,

Varanhian,

Tatars,

And our own people -

Much more terrible than Tatars

Yes, from these roots stem Russia’s melancholia, paranoia, passivity, xenophobia and national self-pity.

“And our own people – much more terrible than the Tatars”, this is not only true in Russia, but it also applies to many other countries, where their own political leaders are far more cruel than the invaders, killing more people.

Russia’s extremely cold weather and hardship in history explains to us why most of them are frosty, straight face, even those who are serving hospitality industry having not much smiles to offer their guests.

Moscow and Beijing: Cities look alike

I saw some resemblance in the city scenes of Moscow and Beijing, especially the old buildings and apartments that were built in the Communist ruling era. And, both cities adopt the same Ring Road concept. In Moscow, it is called Moscow Automobile Ring Road, or MKAD, more precisely МКАД in Moscow word, an acronym for Московская Кольцевая Автомобильная Дорога.

Moscow covers an area of about 386 square miles (878,7 square kilometers), its outer limit being roughly delineated by this Moscow Ring Road. Most of the areas beyond this highway have been designated as Forest-Park Zone, or greenbelt.

The pattern of rings and radials that mark the historical stages of Moscow's growth remains evident in its modern layout. The center of all rings is Moscow Kremlin and famous Red Square. It’s just like Beijing, the Ring Roads centralized the historical Forbidden City (The Chinese Imperial Palace from the Ming Dynasty) and the famous Tiananmen Square.

Surprisingly, the Moscow subway system has the biggest ridership of all metro systems throughout the world, with 3.2 billion riders annually traveling on 12 subway lines to 172 stations. In total, the Moscow Metro covers approximately 178 miles. And it is convenient to use metro when tour the Moscow city.

The map of Metro Station of Moscow

The Ring of metro is one of the tourist attractions

Spring in April is still cold in Moscow, the temperature can drop to - 4 Celsius at night and I witnessed a few snowfalls during my short stay.

High Cost of Living

Last year in my brief travel to Sao Paulo, I complaint about the high cost of living there, but I wouldn’t say so if I had came to Moscow first. According to Batyr, our Russian nationality regional sales manager, many of Moscow people have to rely on second or third job in order to make a modest living. Anyone with a private car can temporarily turn it into a taxi to transport passengers; the law unofficially allows it.

When the Russia communism collapsed in the nineties, it gave way to freer market activities and allowed possession of private assets, the first wave opportunists with strong political connections, and the far-sighted entrepreneurs were the first who became either filthy rich or über-rich. Although the present economy is badly hit by the global slowdown, the roads of Moscow filled with luxury vehicles tell quite a different story.

In Search for The Right Partners

FingerTec 4-day exhibition ran quite smoothly with Batyr around. The market potential is huge, and we have yet to find steady partners, only have a few irregular customers from the past. Just like Brazil, unpredictable custom procedures and high duty imposed deters the ordinary companies from directly importing any merchandise into Russia. We have to look for the right partners to start a more robust business in the Russian territory.

We received quite some visitors from the Russian speaking CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) countries. Our advantage, again, Russian language is readily available in our hardware and software, including in some of the marketing materials. Like what we always highlighted, “With FingerTec, we make everything easy.”

Ms Roza from Armenia

Mr. Kovalchuk (middle) from Ukraine and Mr. Batyr (left)

Thanks to Mr Kovalchuk Olekksandr, Axioma – Techno and Mr. Pastushenko Yuriy, Egida Ltd. from Ukraine; and Ms Karapetyan Roza, Elcomp Electronic Company from Armenia, who were unhesitant to purchase sample units on the spot. We hope our small steps would spark a bigger business collaboration in the future for the market of Russia and The Commonwealth of Independent States.

To thaw the icy reception, we put our best foot forward, presenting our Russian staff, Batyr Komurzoev, an avid economist who is pursuing his Phd in International Islamic University Malaysia at the frontline, for better communication and product’s localization process. I always believe in long-term business planning.

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ

Toilet Quality Management (TQM)

My counterpart, Kan San, CEO of Founder Japan likes to compare China companies with Japan’s over management style and product quality. One of his favorite theories is toilet sanitary.

Kan San, CEO of Founder Japan

Once at his opening speech to address the Founder Group delegates during an overseas meeting held in Tokyo back in 1998, he said, “The cleanliness of a company’s toilet reflects the company’s management quality; and the cleanliness of public toilets tell the quality culture of a nation. ”

I couldn’t agree more. But when he kept appraising Japan to the bored audience in a dinner, I jokingly brushed him off by saying, “You didn't reveal the true reason of why Japanese public toilets are so clean, from my observation Japanese seldom use toilet to pee but they do it in the alley when they drunk.” Everyone burst into laughter.

Someone told me our former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed, who had started the Look East Policy (to learn from the eastern developed countries such as Japan & South Korea rather than the western to lessen the West influence) in the eighties, always had a private agenda to put toilet a must-visit ‘destination’ in his official functions, with the quality’s prying motive. ;-)

No matter how elegant an office building is, when you have to pinch your nose to enter the toilet, you have to think twice whether you still want to continue buying their products or services. The upkeep of toilet cleanliness reviews some trueness. Whether we call it toilet, washroom, restroom, WC, lavatory, latrine, john or loo, or whatever the term is, the sanitary of a toilet reflects the image of a company, and it is also a place where you can’t stick “Restricted Area” sign to disallow visitor to enter.

Recently, we have spent some money to upgrade our very own toilets, to further impress and to provide a more pleasant environment for staff and visitors when they carry out their daily “release” and “relieve” business.

Our upgraded toilet

24-Month Product Warranty

In April, we made an announcement to give away 24 months product warranty to customers and 28 months to resellers. This move is not merely a sales strategy without the support of our product quality.

From our internal audit figure for 2008, the total cost for claimed part is just a friction of 0.3% to our total revenue. If we extended the limited warranty period to two years, it would still far lower than 1%. That’s the rationale why we happily extended the warranty period.

Moreover, we have successfully implemented the Salesforce.com CRM system to further monitor the inflow and outflow of every warranted part claimed to ensure the smoothness of the whole process. I can imagine a big smile for our customers!

In any ISO standard certification, the management guru likes to emphasize on Total Quality Management (TQM) approach. But for an outsider, where is the simplest checkpoint? Needless to say, it’s toilet. Therefore, I rephrase the TQM with the simpler Toilet Quality Management.

All in all, toilet quality tells it all. :-)

by Teh Hon Seng, CEO, FingerTec HQ