Tag Archives: competitive crowdsourcing


Better shred than read: DARPA uses competitive crowdsourcing to revive destroyed documents

Posted on January 12, 2012 by Ville Miettinen

… best programmers in the world are only going to come up with one solution at a time. Knowing that crowdsourcing would provide a variety of possible solutions, DARPA decided to establish a crowdsourced competition.

With a first prize of $50,000 (much cheaper than hiring programmers) the “ Shredder Challenge ” had five challenges of increasing difficulty. In a clever bit of gamification, each document consisted of a puzzle that could only be solved when the document had been stitched back …

Tags: crowd crowdsourcing DARPA documents microtask microwork paper

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Winner takes it all?

Posted on August 17, 2010 by Tommaso De Benetti

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On this forum we spend a lot of time discussing the enormous potential of crowdsourcing, and how it is going to change all our lives for the better. At Microtask, we just love crowdsourcing. With that in mind, what I am about to say may shock you. I urge you to sit down.

Recently I read a rather disturbing article on crowdsourcing. The article focused on 99designs, a community for crowdsourced web pages and logo designs.

In theory it’s great. Say you want a …

Tags: 99designs competition competitive crowdsourcing contest creativity crowdsourcing CrowdSpring design microtask MycroBurst reDesignMe

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Food52: a recipe for crowdsourcing success?

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Ville Miettinen

… for by the crowd. Winning recipes are awarded prizes and eventually published.

Aside from the crowdsourcing element, what struck me most about Food52 is how good the site looks. Food-wise Amanda and Merrill may be “all about simplicity”, but there’s nothing homemade about their presentation. Winning crowdsourced recipes are accompanied by mouth-watering professional photos (warning: this is not a site for dieters). No doubt this acts as a participation incentive: “enter our …

Tags: Amanda Hesser App Store Cook crowd crowdsourcing Food Food52 Merrill Stubbs microwork new york times

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Confidence tricks: can crowdsourcing keep our feet on the ground?

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Ville Miettinen

… shown the power of the crowd to overthrow dictatorial regimes but so far most attempts at using crowdsourcing to design better alternatives have met with limited success ( Iceland’s constitution being one of a few exceptions).

Despite such setbacks, as we learn to use crowdsourcing more effectively, I am certain that it will solve all the world’s problems caused by overconfidence. Absolutely, 100% certain.

Tags: Brad Guigar Charles Darwin crowd crowdsourcing Deepwater Horizon Dunning–Kruger effect Iceland Lynn Johnston microtask microwork

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Winds of change: can crowdsourcing help solve environmental problems?

Posted on December 8, 2011 by Ville Miettinen

… readers of this blog will know, we here at Microtask are pretty enthusiastic when it comes to crowdsourcing initiatives that have the power to make the world a better place.

This time last year, we wrote a blog about some crowdsourcing projects designed to improve our understanding of environmental issues, including climate change. Basically, while there were some good projects, we felt that the crowd had a lot more to offer. One year later, has much changed?

I can feel it coming, …

Tags: activism Climate change crowd Crowdflower crowdsourcing iPhone microwork Needless Weather

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