Photos pose a challenge to search engines such as Google. While it can sometimes do a fair job of guessing what a photo is about based on the file name, or URL, or even the context in which the image appears, none of these are as accurate as the description an actual human would give an image.
Flickr, in contrast, provides rich meta data for each image as it’s collected, with the opportunity to add or modify that data. My contacts can add their own tags to my photos, further enhancing my photo with relevant meta data, and making it easier to find and retrieve similar photos.
But what about the millions of photos already out on the web? How on earth do you set about tagging those photos?
Enter the ESP Game. Begun as a research project, this “game” pairs you up with a random partner with the objective of “tagging” images with the same tag. Each match increases your score. You play a game, and the tagging, well, that’s like free labor.
Google has now borrowed a page from the ESP Game with their own Google Image Labeler project. It’s admittedly based on the ESP Game, but much more obvious about the objectives (improving image search results). It makes me wonder how many other menial tasks can be turned into games…
Anyone up for a rousing game of “fix the sprinkler heads?”
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September 11th, 2006 at 4:41 am
I’m sure Samuel L Clemens, Robert M Sherman, and Richard M Sherman would all approve of this tactic.
September 12th, 2006 at 10:26 am
Mike, Samuel L Clemens is an obvious reference , but I need a little context to make sense of the Sherman brothers. I get that they were composers; should I assume that the music was really composed by a larger team?
September 12th, 2006 at 11:54 am
Robert and Richard wrote the famous Disney lines:
“In every job that must be done
There is an element of fun
You find the fun and snap!
The job’s a game”
Mary Poppins - “Spoonful of Sugar”