What if your computer cared about if you were happy or not?

What is your computer? It is an electronic device, a tool that you probably use every day. So, why would it care if you’re smiling or not? Computers are logical and rational; they don’t have feelings like sadness, anger or frustration. They just weren't programmed to do any sort of emotion.

Are you smiling or not? Well, that’s obviously not something a computer needs to worry about!

But wait, a Chrome extension, called Smile Suggest, actually uses an open source computer vision library to automatically bookmark and share any websites that make you smile. Yes, actually smile with your mouth!

Martin McAllister, the British copywriter that created it, said he wanted to create something that was more emotionally based rather than content based. So, how can we control our computers by smiling at them?

Once you have allowed the Chrome Extension to turn on your webcam, you can then use the slider to set how big a smile will save a page on a scale of one to 10.

When Smile Suggest is on, your webcam will stay on so it can scan your face for a smile. A green checkmark appears when a page has been added to your bookmarks. If you don’t want to bookmark pages with your pearly whites, you can always turn Smile Suggest off.

So, could a smile be a useful signal for a computer? Well, probably. How would you feel if you could review every YouTube video that made you crack up in 2012? Or if you could read an old conversation on Facebook that made you smile years ago.

It would also be interesting to look over a list of links at the end of the day that not only made you smile, but that made you confused, surprised or sad. The pages would be bookmarked by the emotional responses they generated.

In the meantime though, Smile Suggest just lets you list those pages that made you smile and feel like you’re on top of the world. Download the app here, and see what your bookmarks look like at the end of the day.

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Written By: Christine Romans
CopyWriter at The Computer Guyz Cape Town