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Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Uses Human Computing Game to Tune Bing (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by
Al
Al writes: "Microsoft researchers have come up with a novel way to fine-tune the algorithms behind the company's new search engine Bing: a game that harness human-computing power to improve the results. Called Page Hunt, the game (which unfortunately requires Silverlight to run) shows users a webpage and asks them to figure out a search query that should produce the page within the first 5 results. The idea is to better understand users' behavior and expectations and ultimately improve its search algorithms. Other human-computing projects have sought to digitize out-of-print text (reCAPTCHA) and image labeling (Google Image Labeler). Can Microsoft use a similar approach to gain the edge over its rival? Or does Google already have the edge with SearchWiki, which lets searchers re-rank its results."
Idle

Submission + - English DJ claims Wi-Fi-allergy (dailymail.co.uk)

Submitted by
path0$
path0$ writes: "British Ex-DJ Steve Miller claims that his WI-FI-allergy is making his life one big misery , forcing him to live in an iron-clad home far from any neighbours. According to the article more and more people are suffering from an allergy like his. The only positive side to this is that at least Miller didn't think of suing anybody yet, like these people who claim to suffer from the same condition did and were mentioned in a slashdot article in 2008."

Comment Re:Flip a coin (Score 0) 176

by path0$ (#28767733) Attached to: Valve's Newell On Community-Funded Games

Honestly to me this sounds as if you try to make the idea sound like BS out of some personal problems with Newell?

I for one think that the idea is quite good. Of course a developer shouldn't rely only on the support he gets from these "mini-investors" but it could definitely reduce cost and grant customers a greater influence on what is produced.

I didn't see anything about 50$ and I agree that that might be a bit much but investing i.e. 25 bucks for a game that I'm sure will rock (Diablo3; Starcraft 2; DUKE NUKEM !!!; etc.) seems reasonable to me even if I'd get nothing for the game in return.

This could be a great idea especially for "indie" games where studios aren't that big and still create great stuff and would give them quite a backing.
Of course some control mechanisms would be needed, development reports but maybe monthly and chances to give feedback maybe in a forum. But you should always keep in mind that these mechanism can't cost too much otherwise the whole idea won't make sense anymore.

To sum it up you wouldn't be flipping a coin but rather making an investment with (more or less) foreseeable risks, as long as you inform yourself.

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