Think & Play
Thoughtplay is the creative team behind various popular websites and other projects. At this blog we give away bright ideas regularly, and comment on interesting trends both online and off. The thought channel is for more business-related trends, play looks at entertainment and leisure, and thoughtplay introduces our own creative ideas, as well as news about our projects.
Slow but careful reading | 250507
Here's a good idea which has been doing the rounds of the net this week: reCAPTCHA. Web users are now largely inured to using 'captcha' systems which oblige them to verify they're not computers (ie spammers) by entering a displayed word or some gibberish correctly. reCAPTCHA leverages the concept to help digitisation of books - two words are displayed, one from a scan of an old book; enter the captcha correctly and it assumes you've read the other word right too. Presumably more reliable than OCR, and a classic example of crowdsourcing. Tie it in with Gutenberg's distributed proofreading program, and this could make inch-by-inch but valuable progress through the archives. (Read the reCAPTCHA creator's original post here.)
Categories: play
Worth the wait? | 140507
Swapaskill is another 'gift economy' site worth watching - though it has been a long time coming since its somewhat premature announcement in The Guardian back in November. It seems to be working now, though you have to register to see how it works, which is pretty annoying.
(On that cool-idea-but-annoying-wait-etc theme, the beta of much-awaited online TV provider Joost is finally rolling out to the world - but woebetide you if you're a Mac user with a pre-Intel model...)
Categories: play
«-- back