Tag Archives: reCAPTCHA


Duolingo Beta put to the test: can you learn a language while translating the web?

Posted on February 29, 2012 by Tommaso De Benetti

… his name might not ring a bell for everyone, his legacy definitely will: he is the guy behind reCAPTCHA, the bot-blocking service that uses all of us to help digitize the archives of The New York Times and Google Books. (Just think: every time you have to squint your eyes and turn your head sideways to decipher those annoyingly blurry squiggly words, you’re making the world a better place. Still, feel free to swear while you do it.)

In this TED presentation, von Ahn introduces his …

Tags: Caribbean crowd crowdsourcing Duolingo Google Books Luis von Ahn microtask microwork new york times reCAPTCHA TED translation

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The Future of Work: Paid to Play?

Posted on January 26, 2010 by Tommaso De Benetti

Boredom at work is a big problem. In fact it’s one of the main reasons people complain about their jobs. Imagine if work could be as entertaining as your favourite game and what this could mean for work satisfaction and productivity.

The Problem with Work

Many people believe that work is a boring but necessary requirement for enjoying ‘real life’ outside work. …

Tags: fun game design games job reCAPTCHA MMORPG SEGA task Typing of the Dead work

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Google Ngrams: in the beginning was the word search

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Ville Miettinen

… were good enough to use as Ngrams. So, how about a little help from the crowd? Google already use reCAPTCHA to help decipher old New York Times issues, why not go further? As we know from Digitalkoot, people are amazingly good at reading difficult text and love the chance to contribute to worthwhile projects – especially if they are presented in an entertaining form.

The crowd might even be able to tackle handwritten documents, and correct OCR errors (just try charting use vs ufe to …

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