Google Copies the ESP Game

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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