The first Android Developers Challenge was the birthplace for some of the most popular applications in the Market. One of the finalist that caught my eye was BioWallet. It was a biometric security app that protected your information with iris and handwriting recognition.
I had been eagerly waiting for this innovative software to be released when I received the following note today. It appears the developers are having difficulty bringing their original idea to the Android platform and are in search of more funding. They are currently entered in the BBVA Open Talent contest and have asked for our help in reaching the next round of competition.
We know many of you have been eagerly waiting to see BioWallet in the Android Market, but we are still facing some serious development issues that are making the BioWallet release quite difficult. Iris recognition with a mobile device is a complex task and the Android platform is not making things easier because it is not well suited for this kind of application. Right now, our main handicaps are (without getting too technical):
- Dalvik (Android Virtual Machine) imposes a memory limit for applications that is too low (16 MB) for many of the image processing operations we have to perform in order to recognize an iris.
- Dalvik is an interpreted virtual machine and that causes a poor performance for CPU-intensive operations like iris recognition.
- The only Android phone in the market so far (HTC Dream / T-Mobile G1) doesn’t have an outstanding camera. The resolution is enough (3.1 Mpx) but the auto-focus feature doesn’t work well with short distances, it lacks a macro mode and the picture quality with low lighting is quite poor.
We are working hard to solve these problems, but BioWallet is not our main job and we can only develop it in our “free” time (nights, weekends, holidays…). In addition, we have to balance it with other personal and professional projects, so please bear with us.
These days we are trying to get some funding from the Spanish bank BBVA to keep the development active. You can help us just clicking the button “Votar” (Vote) in the BBVA OpenTalent section in our web page or theOpenTalent site (Spanish).
Last but not least, we really want to thank you for your support. Seriously, that means a lot for us and gives us a reason to push ourselves hard and get BioWallet ready soon.
Cheers,
BioWallet Team
If you would like to show your support and help this Android developer, please visit the official BioWallet or BBVA sites and place your Votar (vote). BioWallet also has a poll on their site asking what other biometric methods you would like to use for security. Videos are also available if you would like to see a demonstration of the application.
[Thanks to Roy for the tip.]
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Taylor Wimberly
Taylor is the founder of Android and Me. He loves playing with all kinds of gadgets, but most importantly cell phones. His other hobbies include cooking (BBQ hero!), politics, football, and watching every MMA event possible.
8 Comments
They have my vote. I know first hand how difficult it can be to bootstrap a mobile application business and balance a full time job. Best of luck biowallet.
Thank you so much for your support!
Keep the good work with this site guys, it is great!
Jose Luis Huertas
BioWallet Team.
Deff. voting for these guys, we need something like this for android! Keep up the good work!
dont take this the wrong way but… how secure could this really be… just trying some of the paint apps on the market just writing something seems hard sometimes to make it seem like writting on a tablet atleast, and for the iris part.. i only see probable rate of atleast 40-60% working..i mean dont take this as one of those put down posts people make, i was on one of the G1 chat apps oneday, and someone wanted a thumbprint scanner , to be used on the “touch”screen thinking it would actually scan the fingerprint.. gave me a good hard laugh but again, i had to explain all the failure of how he thought it would work, but i could be wrong id have to poke and prod at the app, what i would LIKE to see is one that scans barcodes.. that would be a bit more hard to douplicate atleast since there are QR codes that people could make, and hold various text’s …
just a thought.
This is a rough translation from the Spanish site about security concerns.
“On your BioWallet working on a series of “life test” to ensure that what is presented to the device is a real eye. These tests range from checking the dilation of the pupil in situations with different luminosity to ask the user to collaborate and wink your eye at the instant shown, looking sideways, etc…”
Biometric system is need in voting… then only duplicate votes will be stoped…
Roshid
I so want this app…