Researchers at Newcastle University in the UK are working on a project they call 'Draw a Secret'. Instead of using traditional textual passwords, 'Draw a Secret' allows users to draw a picture as their password. Originally this project was focused on providing a password alternative for users of handheld/mobile devices, for which pen input is easier than text input. However, it may have ramifications beyond these platforms, as it is claimed that picture passwords are 'a thousand times more secure' than text passwords, and that users find them easier to remember.
I found the link to this article through this discussion on Slashdot.org, and thought that it may be interesting to other developers working on Image Processing in Symbolism (as well as being trivially implemented with a subset of Symbolism).
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Users can try some softwares, such as web image protector, it enables users to protect website images from being easily saved or harvested by users. It modifies the HTML source and splits images into multiple parts, then re-assembles them using CSS and tables.
From what I gathered from the article, using a method like that in Symbolism (at least for the time being) wouldn't be possible. They seem to be using a time sequence based ("on-line") algorithm, where the order of strokes seem to matter. With Symbolism, we (have to?) use more traditional OCR ("off-line") methods for matching images, that can match images as a whole, with no idea about order of strokes, pen-lifting, etc.
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