The Mechanical Turk

[surelars]

Call me cynical, but it's been a long time since I last saw something in the IT or Internet world that made me think "Yay!". Something that creates a buxx for me. Lots of neat web2 sites, lots of neat new devices, 10Gbps & 40Gbps networking, etc. Nice, but no real excitement.

Tonight, though, I came upon Amazon's Mechanical Turk, and this is

Comments

[firecat]

I recently investigated it to see if it was something my mother would be able to do to feel engaged/useful. (Answer: Probably not.)

But the neat appplication was this: at the time, a pilot had gone down over a remote area, and one of the HITs was to look at aerial photos of the area trying to identify debris from the crash. I guess they never did find him, but it was an interesting way to use the technology.

[selki]

This is also being called "human computing". Look up projects sand studies by Luis von Ahn's group out of Carneghie-Mellon -- I attended a lecture by him last winter. E.g., Peekaboom, Re-Capcha, the Name Game (licensed/adapted by Google Images as the Image Labeler game).

Re: The Mechanical Turk

[pir_anha]

yeah, it's pretty nifty; i've played with it since they first announced it. not doing anything serious with it, but i really enjoy the concept, and like keeping an eye on what all's happening. i spent a lot of time on it looking for steve fossett (the lost aviator firecat was talking about), and even though we didn't find him, it felt really worthwhile to be doing something constructive from so far away.

the stuff i don't like so much is that there are some HITs that strikes me as "producing better spam for unscrupulous people" lately.