Japan's Kao Chekki (Face Check) Proves That Vanity Apps Know No Boundaries
The service is quite simple and cleverly plays with human vanity: People submit their photograph from their cell phones to check which (Japanese and international) celebrities they resemble the most. Kao Chekki scans the pictures and emails back the top three celebrity matches, including percentage match, a few moments later.
Kao Chekki works very well with Japanese faces (trustme on that one), but seems to have slight problems with foreigners. Michael and Erick really don’t resemble Gori-san and Kiyokiba-san, respectively, do they? Although, Gori-san is known as a cut-up.
The site’s overwhelming success spawned a number of copycats, including a rather bizarre service called Koe Chekki (Voice Check): Here, users call a phone number, leave a short message and are then emailed back to their cell phones with a list of celebrities with similar voices. Okay, maybe that one won’t translate overseas.