Please do not post forwarded messages to the list. Refer to the list guidelines concerning these types of posts. You will find that, things of this nature are to be presented to the management team for approval. THANK YOU, Richard Justice-list moderator www.blind-computing.com Richard Justice-website ownner www.blind-computing.com ----- 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]
