Judgment call but I don't believe this is something that should be posted on here, certainly not without moderator approval first. Please reframe from this practice if you would. David Ferrin ----- Original Message ----- From: "Thao Vy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2007 9:59 AM Subject: [Blind-Computing] Fw: CAPTCHAs For Social Good? (features GroZi)
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "BlindNews Mailing List" > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, > October 22, 2007 9:21 PM Subject: CAPTCHAs For Social Good? (features GroZi) > > > Internet News.com Monday, October 22, 2007 > > CAPTCHAs For Social Good? (features GroZi) > > By Susan Kuchinskas > > Researchers at the University of California at San Diego have a plan to meld > the brains of Internet users into a vast human grid that would make use of > the seconds wasted on solving CAPTCHAs (define) to enact social change. > > Likely familiar to any frequent Web user, CAPTCHAs are those > difficult-to-see images comprised of squiggly letters and lines designed to > confound blog spam bots and the like. Blogs and online forums typically use > codes hidden in CAPTCHAs to prove that a poster is a human, rather than an > automated program; ideally, a human user can see and enter a CAPTCHA's > hidden code, while an automated program cannot. > > While finding a hidden CAPTCHA code may take only a couple of seconds, when > multiplied by the millions of other Internet users also responding to > CAPTCHAs, those seconds can add up to hundreds of wasted hours. > > The Soylent Grid project wants to apply those wasted seconds to identifying > images for assistive technology applications. > > The project, named in reference to the 1973 Charlton Heston film Soylent > Green and its famous phrase, "Soylent Green is people!", is already well on > its way toward developing ways to make use of time that would normally be > spent on CAPTCHAs. > > Soylent Grid's first application to harness tiny bits of Internet users' > attention is GroZi Shopping Assistant, a program that helps visually > impaired people with the difficult task of locating objects in stores. > > LINK: http://grozi.calit2.net/ > > A joint mission between the California Institute of Telecommunications and > Information Technology (CalIT2) and UCSD's Computer Science and Engineering > departments, GroZi would use the Soylent Grid project to funnel to Web users > images taken by visually impaired people, who can then identify the objects > in those images. > > GroZi relies on a wearable system with a camera and tactile/haptic feedback, > a blind-accessible interface and computer vision-based object recognition > software. > > GroZi's human need > > But without Soylent Grid's human factor, GroZi faces difficult technical > hurdles. Recognizing content in digital images has long been a nut difficult > for computer science to crack. The human brain, on the other hand, is superb > at recognizing content in images, knowing immediately which object in a > family photo is Uncle Sean and which is the family dog. > > For the GroZi prototype, it took developer Michele Merler, now at Columbia > University, weeks to input the 120 products found in a single 45-minute > video. To make the system truly useful, however, GroZi would need to be able > to decipher the staggering array of items available in modern stores within > seconds. > > Enter Soylent Grid. Instead of building an image database item by item, the > project could take advantage of time spent identifying CAPTCHAs. In such a > scenario, the system could test a user attempting trying to post on a blog > by asking them to decipher a GroZi photo instead of a traditional CAPTCHA. > > The idea is to do this in real time, so that a visually impaired person at a > grocery store could use GroZi to tell the corn niblets from the creamed > corn. > > "The currently used types of CAPTCHAs are a complete waste once they go > stale," said Stephen Belongie, the UCSD professor who heads the project. > "They're totally artificial, and when hackers crack them, their approach is > invariably 'hacky' and neither reveals any insight into human object > recognition nor does it do any good for society as a whole." > > While efforts in other industries are being made to improve image > recognition -- search engines, for example, are interested in > image-recognition technology to improve their search results -- a > human-powered system like the GroZi-Soylent Grid effort could vastly improve > the lives of the blind and vision-impaired. > > Researchers outlined the benefits (PDF file) of Soylent Grid earlier this > week in a paper presented at the Interactive Computer Vision 2007 conference > in Rio de Janeiro. > > LINK: > http://vision.ucsd.edu/~vrabaud/papers/SteinbachRabaudBelongieICV07SoylentGrid.pdf > > Soylent Grid, GroZi, and CAPTCHAs > > For a Soylent Grid/GroZi combination to make an impact, however, the service > would need to partner with one or more online entities that make heavy use > of CAPTCHAs, such as blogging platforms or social media sites. > > For example, the Soylent Grid team estimates that Digg users could identify > an image approximately every 17 seconds. That's far from fast enough for > someone hurrying through their shopping. Belongie estimates that five > seconds would be an acceptable turnaround time, so GroZi would need 25 times > the CAPTCHA-producing power of Digg. > > Image-recognition as part of a live video feed is an even more remote > possibility. > > "The idea of doing real-time object recognition on a live video stream is at > the fantasy end of the Soylent Grid spectrum," Belongie said in an e-mail > interview. "In reality, we expect it will be more likely to have an > increased role for the computational processing component, so that the > available human cycles are employed more opportunistically. > > Ideally, every product identified would go into a standalone database, > eventually enabling quicker lookups for GroZi that wouldn't require the > input of Web users. This ultimately could allow the Soylent Grid project to > be harnessed for other endeavors. > > "If the initial GroZi box had some amount of computational power ... it > could be pulled off the grid and run locally on the GroZi box in the user's > hand, or run remotely on a private-GroZi-only computational system of much > smaller scale," said Stephan Steinbach, another Soylent Grid project member. > > Soylent Grid is an example of crowdsourcing, the notion of bringing together > masses of users to accomplish what no individual or company could. > > LINK: http://www.internetnews.com/infra/article.php/3614451 > > HumanGrid, launched in December 2005, is another example of applying > crowdsourcing to labor-intensive tasks. The HumanGrid marketplace, in > private beta, aims to introduce businesses and researchers to individuals > willing to perform micro-tasks for micro-payments, such as data enhancement, > text classification, transcription and picture classification. > > LINK: http://www.humangrid.eu/ > > Amazon's Mechanical Turk service is another example; It's a similar > automated marketplace where businesses can offer to pay humans to do tasks > like tagging objects found in images or selecting the best photos of a > product from a set of images. > > The e-tailing giant developed the technology to help sort out the 20 million > photos of storefronts to be used in its A9 Yellow Pages local search > product. > > LINK: http://www.internetnews.com/xSP/article.php/3465211 > > Belongie said that Soylent Grid has a better chance of succeeding because > its strategy of distributing the work via third-party sites creates an > ecosystem. > > "For all three main parties involved -- the researchers, the Web sites, and > the users -- there's something in it for them," he said. Researchers, > whether academic or commercial, "have data they need labeled, for which one > assumes they'd be willing to pay ... for example, someone wanting to spot > pizza storefronts or real estate posters in Google Street views footage." > > "Web site owners want a fresh source of CAPTCHAs, since the ones they use > routinely go stale, meaning they get cracked by hackers in the Ukraine," he > added. "And the users simply want to get to whatever content lies behind the > CAPTCHA." > > > http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3706396 BlindNews Mailing > List Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "subscribe" as subject > > Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe" as subject > > Moderator: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Archive: http://GeoffAndWen.com/blind > > RSS: http://GeoffAndWen.com/BlindNewsRSS.asp > > More information about RSS feeds will be published shortly. > > This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from > http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm > > > Visit the Blind Computing List home page at: > http://www.blind-computing.com > Address for the list archives: > http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ > To post to this group, send email to > [email protected] > To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For help from Mailman with your account Put the word help in the subject or body of a blank message to: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Use the following form in order to contact the management team > http://www.jaws-users.com/BlindComputing.php > If you wish to join the JAWS Users List send a blank email to the following address: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Visit the Blind Computing List home page at: http://www.blind-computing.com Address for the list archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help from Mailman with your account Put the word help in the subject or body of a blank message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Use the following form in order to contact the management team http://www.jaws-users.com/BlindComputing.php If you wish to join the JAWS Users List send a blank email to the following address: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
