Doctor Recommended
100% All Natural

Lew Rockwell pointed to several photo albums comprised of extraordinary images.

An artist by the name of Julian Beever uses ordinary chalk on everyday pavements, such as sidewalks and streets, to create highly detailed three-dimensional scenes and elaborate photo-realistic images.

Here is a sampling: 1 2 3

In my previous post I mentioned the automation and assembly of seemingly tedious tasks into a useful product.

Turns out that about a month ago, a guy by the name of Luis von Ahn visited Google and gave a talk to a group of its employees. Luis is the creator of a computer game called the ESP Game, which does exactly what Google Image Labeler does (though after playing both, I think his version has a better layout/design).

His talk is very effective, as he really makes you think outside the box in terms of spinning mundane tasks into productive creations (see for instance, his statistics on how much time is wasted playing solitaire).

Addendum: according to Danny Sullivan, Google recently licensed the technology from von Ahn for their own uses.

Do you recall the old timey Tom Sawyer character from the novel’s of Mark Twain?

Remember how he managed to get a group of his friends to paint a fence for him?

Somehow, Google has managed to do the same things with its ginormous database of images through a new program called Google Image Labeler.

The idea is simple, yet ingenious. Google has a system in which you gain irredeemable points for every image you tag.

You log into their system and label images with a few keywords. And you are also paired off with a random person as well. If you think about it, this helps diversify the pool of words that can be used, and it can help highlight users whom are merely pranksters.

The bottom line for Google is that they get to use the labor of its zealous fan base for free, whereas Amazon pays users to do the same thing.

Brilliant.

Kids, don’t try this at home.

Or rather, leave the rubber duckies at home and wear a life jacket.