Tag Archives: Application programming interface


Speaking in tongues: how the crowd is transforming translation

Posted on April 12, 2011 by Jani Penttinen

… we’re used to avoiding it. Usually we only translate documents when we have to, such as an application for a foreign visa or an instruction manual for a product to be sold overseas.

Machine translation, such as Google Translate, has been around for a few years, but quality is still an issue. It is a great tool when you personally need to understand some foreign text, but it falls far short of the standard required for publishing.

Enter the crowd

In the last year translations …

Tags: Application programming interface crowd crowdsourcing English language Facebook Google Translate Moses translation Twitter

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Crowdsourcing and machine translation: the start of a beautiful friendship

Posted on June 30, 2011 by Hannu I. Miettinen

Machine-aided translation is one of those things people love to hate. Despite the best efforts of enthusiasts like myself, the majority of computer users still believe that machines are useless translators.

The whole area of machine translation has a terrible image problem. There are endless jokes and “true” stories about computer translation failures. Some of these are …

Tags: Application programming interface crowd crowdsourcing English language google Google Translate Maamme machine translation microwork Wikipedia William Shakespeare

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Science and the “Nobel” art of gaming

Posted on March 31, 2011 by Tommaso De Benetti

… curiosity (the “let’s see what happens if we try this” impulse) rather than for any specific application. Riedel-Kruse hopes that:

“By playing games involving biology on a scale too small to see with the naked eye, people will realize how amazing these processes are… We are talking about microbiology with these games, very primitive life forms.”

At this point, the actual game-play of Biotic Games is still very basic (plus players need an inconveniently expensive biotechnology …

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A ticket to play

Posted on March 7, 2011 by Tommaso De Benetti

… – all the places where people are usually terribly bored. If you can’t take the crowd to the interface, maybe it’s time to start taking interfaces to the crowd.

Tags: crowd crowdsourcing Game Developers Conference Golden Gate Bridge interface microwork san francisco Twitter Web 2.0 Summit widesourcing

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Testing Times

Posted on March 2, 2011 by Ville Miettinen

… the problem of getting stuff accepted into the app store, but apps only had to be designed for one interface, one handset, one puritanical CEO. iPhone apps still dominate world sales but now Android, Blackberry, Nokia and Microsoft are all focusing on smartphones. These days apps have to work on multiple phones and carriers, fighting for an edge in an increasingly crowded market.

Mob Rule?

At some point, everyone experiences that “cry-with-frustration” feeling you get from badly …

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