Tag Archives: crowd


Could crowd-driven think tanks be weapons of mass instruction?

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Ville Miettinen

… (most imaginative name ever) aims to bust open the walls of the Ivory Tower by inviting the crowd to contribute to its research efforts. Newthinktank aims to create an online forum where public service employees and users can come together to share their experiences, orchestrate research and generate policy ideas. The project is still in its infancy, but could be a fascinating experiment into the possibility of crowdsourced policymaking.

Shooting for the moon

Google has also …

Tags: crowd crowdsourcing Eric Schmidt google microtask microwork Neal Stephenson San Martin California Sergey Brin TED Think tank youtube

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Hey! You! Get off my crowd: is crowdsourcing becoming a meaningless buzzword?

Posted on February 20, 2012 by Ville Miettinen

… of greed triumphing over romance set to a suspiciously familiar musical accompaniment.

The crowd goes wild?

While in some ways it is nice for the crowdsourcing industry to get this sort of attention, the focus on competitive crowdsourcing distracts from the unique opportunities that the crowd can offer.

As we have discussed before, competitive crowdsourcing, which only ends up using a single participant’s work, is the least effective form of crowdsourcing. Crowds are most …

Tags: business Clint Eastwood crowd crowdsourcing Doritos Kim Kardashian Matthew Broderick microwork Super Bowl United States

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My advice to Newt: use the crowd

Posted on February 9, 2012 by Ville Miettinen

… (LRO) could be categorized by image scanning algorithms then distributed over the internet for a crowd of enthusiasts to look at. Any suspicious objects found this way could then be sent on to experts for further analysis.

The LRO has already mapped about 5.7 million km². Unfortunately the images have a rather distant maximum resolution of half a meter per pixel, so finding anything smaller than a campaign bus is going to be quite tough.

This got me thinking about another comment Newt …

Tags: Arizona State University crowd crowdsourcing microwork Mitt Romney Newt Newt Gingrich Paul Davies Robert Wagner Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man White House

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Banking on one another: Can the crowd save itself from the banks?

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Ville Miettinen

… alternative way for people to borrow and lend money.

Models for (spare) change

A variety of crowd-based alternatives now provide ways for people to lend money to each other for profit, sidestepping the banks. As banks continue to clamp down on lending, these companies are seeing enormous growth.

The exchange begins with borrowers proposing an amount they want to borrow. Then, much like crowdfunding, lenders contribute to the loan until it reaches its goal and the borrower gets their …

Tags: Bank crowd crowdsourcing eBay Facebook Funding Circle Loan microtask microwork Person-to-person lending RateSetter

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The Great War Archive: could crowd conscription help?

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Ville Miettinen

… as governments cut spending and crowdsourcing continues to develop, we expect to see much more crowd participation in these sorts of projects. In fact, we expect to be running some of them.

Tags: Archive Christmas Claude Choules crowd crowdsourcing First World War German National Library microtask microwork University of Oxford World War I

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