One of the coolest and most innovative ways to harness people power that I’ve seen online is Google Labeler. Basically the Labeler uses people power in a gamelike setting to improve Google Images relevance.
Sounds sort of complicated, doesn’t it?
But it isn’t. It is quite ingenious. Basically Google first pairs you up with another person and then starts to show you pictures. All you have to do is type words that are associated with the picture. When you and the other person have a match, it validates that this must be true about the image. Thereby eliminating the need for a team of Google people to go through and tag images.
It is actually quite addictive (for at least 10 minutes or so). You do realise that most people use the most basic of words as witnessed by my example below. It reminds me of Outburst without that annoying person buzzing in your ear when you use an off limit word.
Try it out for yourself: http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/
