Google Image Labeler 389
vandalman writes to tell us that Google is betting on the obsessive compulsive need for many users to see big numbers next to their name with a new beta service called Google Image Labeler. From the description: "You'll be randomly paired with a partner who's online and using the feature. Over a 90-second period, you and your partner will be shown the same set of images and asked to provide as many labels as possible to describe each image you see. When your label matches your partner's label, you'll earn some points and move on to the next image until time runs out. After time expires, you can explore the images you've seen and the websites where those images were found. And we'll show you the points you've earned throughout the session."
Too small pics (Score:5, Insightful)
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you could have been paired up with me (Score:3)
WTF am I supposed to do? How do I go to the next image? What happens to my view if the other person does PASS, sits on his ass, labels something (match or not), or closes his web browser?
Does this even work with firefox at all?
Do we get porn?
Re:GAMES (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:More like a creative way to get work for free.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Careful, now; that attitude makes you sound like a communist. It is the basic idea behind the Communist Manifesto: workers should reap the benefits of their own efforts, this requires that everyone owns the means of production he uses, and since a factory can't be operated by a single person alone, it should be owned communally by all the workers working there who can then share the profits between themselves instead of having a rich capitalist - megacorp in these times - pocket them.
Your desire to gain the benefit from your own work is, therefore, completely un-American. The capitalist way of doing things is that you do the work, the investors get the profits, and you get to compete with the Indians for who can survive with the lowest wage. Since India has a much lower cost of living, you're going to lose. Since your economy is bleeding money to India, the buying power of the people of your country is going to shrink, making it more neccessary for corporations to try to cut costs by hiring more Indians, and the situation is going to get worse and worse.
Sure makes you glad to live in a capitalist country, doesn't it ? And sure makes this post likely to be modded down by free-market fundamentalists who don't quite understand that communism ("people should own the means of production they use, and if a particular means needs more than one people to operate, then those people should own it communally") is not exclusive to free market ("everyone is free to produce what they want and trade with whoever they will").
Mod me down, but I'm still right.
INSIGHTFUL???? wtf... (Score:5, Informative)
It is the basic idea behind the Communist Manifesto: workers should reap the benefits of their own efforts,
No, communists believe that people should be paid "according to need" (remember that "from each according to ability
this requires that everyone owns the means of production he uses, and since a factory can't be operated by a single person alone, it should be owned communally by all the workers working there who can then share the profits between themselves instead of having a rich capitalist - megacorp in these times - pocket them.
Again, the whole "corporations get all the profits". Well, they also get all the losses. Do you want to wait to get paid until the corporation has paid back all of its expenses? Do you want to refund wages when it sinks without earning a profit? If you think your employer is going to get rich, a neat trick is to "buy shares". In a worker-owned factory, every worker's ENTIRE investments are in the factory. If ANYTHING goes wrong -- over which they have no control -- they lose their job and their savings. Nice deal, huh? This is why people don't own their workplaces. It makes much more sense for them to trade their share in their workplace and buy shares in a broad array of businesses so as to insure themselves against the financial risk.
Contrary to what you have said above, it is possible to have worker-owned factories under capitalism. They're actually heavily tax favored. Of all the enormous unions out there, any one of them could have pooled members funds and performed a hostile takeover (look it up) of any existing corporation. The reason they don't is, a) the financial risk above, and b) they all realize that what would happen is that for a few days they would merrily "pay themselves" a "fair wage" until they realized they could just pay the market rate for other people to do it.
Please, cure your ignorance.
Re:Too small pics (Score:5, Informative)
http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/help.html [google.com]
How was Google Image Labeler developed?
Google Image Labeler is based in part on technology licensed from and developed at Carnegie Mellon University.
looks good (Score:5, Insightful)
Thats playing the google game solidly for around 12 hours (less if they are good).
Congrats to those people!
As for myself, I found the image sizes too small, but I suppose we are basing the keywords on first impressions and are expected to come from the image search.
I found myself squinting to see what it was meant to be and wasting time, even if it was just 2x larger (scaled would do, no real need for more data) I would spend time there, its actually quite fun especially since you are aiming to get more than your random competitor.
Geez that's addictive (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Geez that's addictive (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm pretty sure I've seen some university project identical to this some time (1 year ?) ago. So it's definitely been done before. Although google does make a perfect (or at least a lot more suited) maintainer for such a project.
Re:Geez that's addictive (Score:5, Informative)
I'm pretty sure I've seen some university project identical to this some time (1 year ?) ago.
Google Image Labeler is based in part on technology licensed from and developed at Carnegie Mellon University. [google.com]
they were not the first (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It might be a copyright issue as well, after all the images come from external sites.
Image Multi Search [friskr.com]
Scaling the small images (Score:4, Insightful)
Ctrl + mouse wheel up/down = zoom in or zoom out.
I imagine the most recent 9.x still has that feature.
I can't vouch for this site: http://www.obermair.net/opera/operausben.htm [obermair.net] but it was near the top of Google's results for a no-install version of Opera 9.01
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Re:Scaling the small images (Score:5, Informative)
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Yes, WAY too small. I was tempted to try typing "postage stamp" or "blurry thing" for the few images I was shown. If I play again I'll have to keep a magnifier handy (or the sooftware equivalent).
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Says, uh, "soft_guy".
Oh boy, points (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh boy, points (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh boy, points (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Oh boy, points (Score:5, Funny)
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10,000 points and $6.50 will get you a cuppa Starbuck's coffee.
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Re:Oh boy, points (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Oh boy, points (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh boy, points (Score:5, Funny)
"What, 2,000,000 Google Points isn't enough for you?! You're bleeding me dry you bitch!"
Re:Oh boy, points (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe you should talk to her about that.
Re:Oh boy, points (Score:5, Funny)
They'll get you modded up to +5, Insightful... congratulations on your increased karma score!
Interesting... (Score:2)
Slender Neck Pr0n (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slender Neck Pr0n (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, I've been playing on their image labelling site for porn, for a couple of hours now. Blowjob, rearend, frombehind, omghot, goatse, childporn,
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Ya know, you're free to give porn labels (cunt, penis, goatse, ...) to mundane images... That way, if you're paired with another slashdotter, the fun can begin...
Re:Slender Neck Pr0n (Score:4, Funny)
Duh.
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The ESP Game (Score:4, Informative)
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Actually Google Licensed It (Score:5, Informative)
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This is Luis Von Arn's Human computation work... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This is Luis Von Arn's Human computation work.. (Score:2, Informative)
I tried it. (Score:5, Funny)
I didn't get one tag in common with my partner!
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Even without deliberate abuse, which will be rampant, the odds of two people labeling the same image in the same way are virtually nil.
Human beings are just barely able to communicate with each other when we are face-to-face. Language functions primarily as a carrier wave for innonation and expression in most (non-geek) social interactions, so the precise meaning of words hardly matters. Because of this we rarely notice that meaning is extremely elastic.
Meani
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2) if the image is clearly a 'car' or 'skyline' people will agree. And especially when you can earn brownie points, people will go for the easiest words. I just had some hits with 'room', where the room was obviously full of people, and 'internet music; because those words were projected on a screen.
It would definitely be good if you could also give an opinion on a photo: too many ar
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1) Do some bloody usability tests with non-cooperating users. if there is no response in 20 secs, block that user and give me a new partner
2) also save non-matching words, I enter brilliant things!
3) the game often gets stuck. give me a bail out button
4) add a response form or forum
and most of all:
5) at the end tell me what the other idiot suggested.
Re:I tried it. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I tried it. (Score:4, Informative)
Huh? I just played the game for five minutes and my 'partner' and I repeatedly labelled images the same way. Telephone, tree, meeting, magazine... Lots of common tags.
Re:I tried it. (Score:4, Funny)
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That happened to me in Firefox 1.5.0.4 (Debian). Has anyone had the same problems?
Content Based Image Retrieval (Score:3, Informative)
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Re:Content Based Image Retrieval (Score:5, Insightful)
Yipee! (Score:4, Funny)
labels: lame free work scheme (Score:3, Interesting)
Until then, it's like Amazon Mechanical Turk, except you work for free.
On a completely unrelated note, this would be a handy service for spammers to get their CAPTCHAs solved for free.
WOW! FUN! (Score:2)
"Charlie", if you are out there, thanks for the amazing 15 rounds we had in a row...
Also, can I get some props for making the highscore with "SMMM"???
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Easy to game the system (Score:2, Funny)
People's competitive nature (Score:5, Interesting)
It's actually a lot more fun (and social) than many computer games I've played, because it's not just about finding applicable labels, but labels that you think the other person will guess. Also looking at what kinds of things matched before gives you some feeling of who you're partnered with, and what words they will likely use.
To me this looks like a winner, for Google at least. And you know what? If this is entertainment, and it helps people find the information they need, I don't mind doing "work" for Google, not one bit. So far they've been very good to me, and as long as that keeps up, I can't feel bad for supporting them.
Amazon Paid (Score:2, Informative)
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I'm sure they must be keeping track of the terms entered though, to see if they can average approximations between different
Orphan points (Score:2)
Eyes of the Calculor (Score:5, Insightful)
Very clever. Of course this was done by Amazon as well I think and I dont know what has come of that effort.
But it really means that they are using the processing power of people to avoid having to create artificial intelligence. And why not? Just use real intelligence from people and let them enjoy it by thinking it is a game!
Definitely BETA! (Score:5, Funny)
Why yes! I'd be glad to agree with my partner's request, except that I ALREADY SENT a pass request, and now the button is greyed out.
This happened several times. The first time, we were almost done anyway, so I let the timer expire. Guess what? If time expires while in this confused "we both want to pass but the system isn't working" state, then it doesn't actually complete the sequence (ie redirect you to the "completion" page). It just sits there, leaving you no choice but to manually return to the beginning page.
Also, people are dumb. I got a picture of a mountain road bordered by pine trees with a large cloud on the horizon. So over the course of about twenty seconds I suggested:
- Cloud
- Mountain
- Road
- Trees
- Pine Trees
- Thunderhead
- Cars
- Car
My partner still hadn't suggested any terms. So I suggested:
- nincompoop
- light weight
- My partner is an idiot
None of those matched, thankfully.
don't play this in a tabbed browser (Score:2)
Had a play with this yesterday (Score:4, Interesting)
That said, the end-of-game summary is an illuminating (and terrifying) revelation of just how bad some people's spelling is.
And there are already trolls... (Score:2)
A picture of the night sky, filled with stars. They want to pass. They can't even type in "stars" or "sky"? Oi... It wouldn't be a real internet experience without the trolls...
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Hmmm... (Score:2, Funny)
2) Ebay
3) ???
4) PROFIT!
Too small. (Score:3, Interesting)
Finding a decent partner is hard (Score:5, Interesting)
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I wonder if, perhaps, you could narrow down your partner-search a little. Perhaps "somebody with enough points that they at least know how to do this" or "only show me pictures from sites that might be related to some subject I'm interested in". Though that opens the possibility of not finding anybody at all.
Or perhaps to gaming the system again, as you and your troll partner pick some unlikely but existing set of key words.
Re:Perhaps you don't understand the game. (Score:4, Funny)
Of course! Because people who think Google's game is a complete waste of time would definitely want to spend several hours of their precious time playing that game as badly as possible, in order to send a "message" about time-wasting to some anonymous person who they know nothing about and will never meet or even talk to. It all makes sense now, thanks for clearing that up.
Actually, I've got an alternate explanation: The server was malfunctioning under the load of too many people trying to play it at once.
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My anecdotal experience suggests the same. I played several rounds, and in almost every case the winning term was the most general and least informative: "guy," "people," "cake," "cigarette" (for a scene in which one person just happened to be smoking). Hard to believe you could find useful data in a sea of terms like that, un
slashdotted google? (Score:2)
First step (Score:5, Funny)
--
I am, therefore I should think
sad fact o'life (Score:2)
Typical though, the slashdot crowd turn up and only half can get a partner.
I can't wait for the lawsuit (Score:2)
Buggy as hell (Score:5, Informative)
Its called the ESP Game (Score:2)
the esp game or idea behind getting people to annotate
images with words was i think developed by luis von ahn
Arash Partow
Lowest common denominator (Score:4, Insightful)
Dan East
ingenious (Score:3, Insightful)
I wish Google would hire me.
Strangely useful (Score:5, Interesting)
If you haven't tried it, try it: you'll learn things about how people perceive pictures. And if your random partner has the same thinking schemes than you, you'll get points!
Google points worth nothing, but that's Google points. Yeah.
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They should make it more clear, but I guess that's what the 'beta' stands for.
Game results in dumb labels (Score:3, Insightful)
Lady, Girl, Man seem to be really common (even if not right) and colours too.
So it soon ends up that pictures are labelled by the words that help you win, rather than the most appropriate words for the image.
Re:Game results in dumb labels (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Wow, how 2-years ago! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wow, how 2-years ago! (Score:4, Informative)
Google Image Labeler is based in part on technology licensed from and developed at Carnegie Mellon University.
http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/help.html [google.com]
Re:Wow, how 2-years ago! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:The Tom Sawyer technique (Score:4, Funny)
In other news, Slashdot offers a submission facility for news stories to get content for the front page.
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I bet they build a huge DB of all this information and try and develop a neural net type system that's able to classify images. This way they populate the model with data for free. Machine processing of images to find pr0n for instance would be very big business and something that has been tried before with little success. It seems the 'how much pink is in the image' algorithm is not reliable - seriously I read that was tried once at some ISP.
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