We all know that there are lots of contest being held before by different crowdsourcing start-ups and most of them are satisfied on what the crowd has given to them. We also know that some of the crowd who worked hard for that contest may be disappointed of the results. And most of the time especially the professional thinks that crowdsourcing degrades their ability and capacity as a professional and concluded that crowdsourcing is an evil. But in the fact that a company is just being practical in terms of cost that’s why they tried crowdsourcing. In this article Spec Watch has emphasized some of the greatest advantage of crowdsourcing.

“Design contests and crowdsourcing have been marketed as the “future of graphic design”, a “new reality”, call themselves “disruptive” and their stated goal (as per Forbes) is, “to slash the cost of graphic design work and democratize a snooty business”. Critics have been called “Dinosaurs”, “gatekeepers fighting hard to maintain the status quo”, advised to “evolve or die” and other such sentiments. Crowdsourcing and design contests have been likened to a movement aimed to turn the graphic design industry “on it’s head”. Crowdsourcing sites’ management have “welcomed the debate” about spec work, and are very vocal about defending their business model on blogs, forums and some have even participated in a SXSW panel debate entitled “Is Spec Work Evil”. Taking the ‘debate’ offer at its word, we thought it would be a worthwhile to look behind the platitudes, and actually analyze the business model that people who advocate spec design tell us is the new reality.”

Waze is an application, primarily for Google Android phones, that gathers data and provides it to the driver. The waze application, running on users’ smartphones, automatically and anonymously sends back GPS points while they are driving. Waze is capable on detecting your current movement to determine if there is a traffic within an area, an open route, or a previously unknown alleyway.  This application relies on multiple data points from multiple phones to provide a full picture of the area. Traffic jams and other changes in road conditions can also be detected by using aggregated driving speed data. Road problems and a few map inaccuracies can be reported by drivers with a single click on their mobile device. The waze website facilitates more extensive map editing. The waze map platform is going to open APIs soon to allow developers to create other features and applications that influence the waze-generated compilation of live map data.

Waze has been very useful for the crowd because it was already use in Israel, and now their target is on the U.S. I know there’s a high possibility that Waze can succeed to be implemented in the U.S. Waze will surely outstand other GPS company because the data they gather is more informative and it’s real-time because of crowdsourcing. Waze’s way of collecting data is collected passively, making it easier on the driver. The result could be the a full-knowledge system that knows when roads are packed and where police patrols like to hide.Sounds really cool,isn’t? If Waze will be implemented on all mobile phones all over the world, it could contribute a lot to the crowd and it could be a major innovator in the market.

Fox Television, the proud home of The Simpsons and Family Guy, has also embrace the power of crowdsourcing they’re looking for another cartoon franchise to add to its roster. But rather than searching in Hollywood, it is crowdsourcing cartoon ideas on the Web. In a contest hosted on animation site Aniboom, professional and amateur animators alike will be able to submit a two- to four-minute animated video online for a chance at cash prizes and a shot at producing a full-length pilot for TV.

The contest starts on May 27. Fox is looking for holiday-themed ideas (anything from Halloween to Christmas). Fox executives will pick four finalists, and the Aniboom audience will pick a fifth. A Fox development deal is not guaranteed, but Fox hopes to find new talent it can showcase on TV.

Aniboom is becoming a strong community for animators. If the contest produces something which ends up on TV, you can expect to see more like this one in the future. But instead of just using Aniboom for what amounts to nothing more than online auditions, Fox should start thinking about how to make its next cartoon franchise truly live online as well as on the Web. I am not sure what that means, but Fox is not even asking for animators to submit videos or concepts with online components. Maybe Fox should launch the series online first before it takes it to TV. That seems to be a popular emerging TV development model these days (see Blah Girls).

If you were developing the next Simpsons for both the Web and TV, what would look like?

Did you know that thousands of Americans forage for fruits and vegetables in local parks and plots of undeveloped land. Collectively gathered, their observations could help researchers make detailed studies of changes in plant distribution and behavior.

“Why not take advantage of the fact that people know this kind of information, but don’t necessarily have a way of taking it to scientists?” said Rebecca McClain, a researcher at the nonprofit Institute for Culture and Ecology.

McClain is part of a team that hopes to develop a networked system that allows foragers to submit notes on the plants they see. They have applied for a grant from the National Science Foundation to study the ecological effects of urban and suburban foraging.

Through the help of crowdsourcing, Hundreds of plant species are routinely collected by America’s foragers, a thousands-strong subculture whose members approach their quest for inexpensive, freshly-picked natural produce with the rigor and focus of trained botanists.

A system similar to that envisioned by McClain exists now for amateur birdwatchers, whose sightings are collated in efforts like the Great Backyard Bird Count, eBird, North American Bird Phenology Program and Project Feederwatch. That data has been invaluable in helping ornithologists and conservationists estimate bird population health and behavior.

In the avian case, there simply aren’t enough scientists to count birds. There are similarly too few researchers to keep real-time, on-the-ground track of America’s plants, many of which are being affected by climate change in ways scientists have just started to study. Satellite imaging of vegetation is helpful, but can lack a fine-grained level of detail.

“Foragers pay very close attention to fine-scale processes,” said Marla Emery, a research geographer with the U.S. Forest Service and author of the NSF proposal. “Satellite imagery is getting finer, but in general it misses these processes. And then there’s the frequency with which satellites sample a location. A lot of what’s seen by foragers is quite ephemeral. For something like mushrooms, they might need to return every three days, and devout foragers could be out there on a daily basis. They’re seeing on a very fine spatial and temporal scale.”

According to Emery, a forager data-gathering project would also provide valuable knowledge about the dynamics of areas that tend to be ignored by researchers focused on traditionally natural locales.

“We don’t get this sort of information on urban and suburban ecosystems, but we could,” said Emery.

The system itself would likely be relatively simple, requiring little more than a database architecture into which foragers would submit codified reports on the status and location of plants.

“In the past, part of the problem with this has been being unable to pinpoint where observations are coming from,” said McLain. “But with GPS technology, especially since it’s now being built into cellphones, everyone’s got it at their fingertips.”

The benefits of the program would be more than scientific, said Allaire Diamond, a graduate student in the University of Vermont’s Field Naturalist program who would handle the forager data system’s technical infrastructure.

She envisions a beta version targeted at expert foragers and a later program that would help amateurs identify plants in the field, perhaps using a plant-recognizing iPhone program connected to and ethnobotanical database.

“Ultimately we’re trying to connect to the land and use a piece of technology to do it,” said Diamond. “It’d be neat to replace the idea that things like iPhones and the internet are going to conflict with being in nature.”

While browsing the net today after a very long brownout I’ve seen this crowdsourcing article. As I’ve read the article it needs support for organizations in which it needs the help of the crowd for volunteers. And it is also made for children to have their very first work experience.

I was writing an email to B.Strong today about how digital media can be used to help voluntary organizations market themselves and generally do whatever they do more effectively.

B.Strong (part of the Council) provides organizational development support and capacity building training to voluntary organizations and community groups and is putting on a series of workshops for voluntary organizations that support excluded communities, especially BME, Migrant, Refugee and New
Communities. Donna, my colleague, and I offered to help them include some training in using online tools for marketing in their programme following a meeting last week.

Now here comes the ‘crowdsourcing’ bit:I promised to put together a list of people and places that voluntary organizations can go to for support, so that they don’t go away from their session without knowing whom to turn to.

Needless to say, I’ll mention the excellent  Social Media Surgeries; and I will encourage them to build collective support networks through Twitter, blogs etc. and to ask their kids to work out how to do stuff for them. (I think this would be a good opportunity for children to get informal work experience.)

If you have any other sources of support that I could add to the list, then please add a comment (below), or email me on john.heaven@birmingham.gov.uk. Information on B.Strong’s sessions are attached here: Leaflet re. B.Strong training.

Source: http://www.digitalbirmingham.co.uk/blog/crowdsourcing-support-for-voluntary-organisations

I suffer from a highly conflicted form of vanity: I don’t really care too much about how I look, but I want a lot of attention for the fact that I’m not vain.

I’ve spent the last two days demanding that my friends choose my next hair color. Stick with the reddish, or go back to dark brown? Granted, these changes are so imperceptible that I’m more or less asking them to choose between ecru and bone. (What? Exactly.)

The scariest option so far has been that I return to my natural color (thanks, Tyler!). Sure…if I had the faintest clue what that was. In fact, one of the meanest things anyone can do to me in a round of Trivial Pursuit is ask, “For the pie…WHAT IS YOUR NATURAL HAIRCOLOR?” My heart stops for a minute, then I realize the joke. And I start to throw things. (I’m a little slow on the uptake…I had to be TOLD Spinal Tap wasn’t a real band.)

Then there are suggestions that I get highlights, or go to a salon. No way…that’s like saying I should upgrade from my Wal-Mart brand cocaine. Whatever a salon can do, I can do better with a $9 bottle of Feria, two glasses of wine, and some olive oil for the inevitable drips.

Source: http://shannonstamey.blogspot.com/2009/05/crowdsourcing-my-hair.html

I think we have decided to get a MacMini and use it for 100% internet TV and movie downloads. This would mean we could get rid of our $170 cable TV bill!. I dont think we would be missing much that we can get on the internet, but we will see. Any suggestions on this, guys? I figure Hulu, TV.com, local news via their websites and PirateBay/Demonoid should have us covered.
Am I missing anything important here, cuz I think we are gonna move on this in the next few days probably.

We are also upgrading our network to 802.11N (mostly) since out old G router is dead anyhow. The Draft-N routers are so cheap now, it only makes sense to do this. Both Macs have N built in, and we can upgrade Jessica’s HP when she feels like she needs to.

Another question: Im confused on whether or not all devices have to be N to have any of them connect as N (~300Mb/s). Does it have to be dual-band to do this? The N router I picked up the other day (that I am returning…thats another story) seemed to ONLY do G. I think this may be because a G device was connecting to it and it wasnt dual band, perhaps? Info on this would be frackin awesome, cuz I plan on exchanging it tomorrow and would like to know what to get.

Source: http://brandonbaker.livejournal.com/574477.html

I found this very nice article discussingthe market with the help of crowdsourcing. Modern investment research, at least as applied in the Capital Market Wiki Project, extends far beyond the 1930 techniques described in the classic Graham and Dodd’s Security Analysis.

Because of the vastly increased complexity of investment markets, securities research now needs to encompass not only the terms and conditions of individual securities, but the laws, rules, and regulations that that govern issuers and the institutions where the securities are traded, cleared, and settled, the legal jurisdictions where issuers operate, taxation, accounting rules, operational techniques, related derivatives, and much more.

Source: http://capital-flow-analysis.com/capital-flow-watch/crowdsourcing-investment-research-capital-market-taxonomy.html

This is getting a bit old, isn’t it? Even after years and years of hearing about the semantic web, the actual semantic metadata is still an extremely rare occurrence on the web. It’s obvious that our current approach to building the linked data cloud is just not working.

Currently, all attempts at providing semantic metadata require server-side changes which means that we need to rely on page authors to implement them. This, of course, is a major obstacle. But what if we could change that? What if we could bypass page authors and have the crowd add semantic metadata to existing pages?

I believe that this is more than possible.

Semantic metadata would usually be added to web pages by adding additional attributes to HTML elements or creating new elements where needed. But as it turns out, existing web pages are already broken up into a surprising number of elements, so why not just use these?

You can view the original article here

Tonight, I was lucky enough to be part of a great panel on crowdsourcing hosted by BU Entrepreneurs and UltraLightStartups. Eric and Alex (respectively) did a phenomenal job bringing a 150+person crowd to the BU management center to attend the event, and we covered the gamut.
Here was the panel.

• Doron Reuveni, CEO & Co-Founder of uTest [Crowdsourced Software/Application Testing]
• yours truly
• Jay Batson, Co-Founder of Acquia [Open Source Drupal]
• Peter LaMotte, Director of Marketing for GeniusRocket [Crowdsourced marketing and advertising collateral]

Each brought a definite different flavor, but one thing was clear. Crowdsourcing is in full swing and best-practices are being developed to exploit opportunity at almost every turn.

Know you crowd and know your customer.

Remember that the crowd is a stakeholder as much as you client.

Pay cash or Pay in street cred, but pay the ones who care and especially those who care and are good.

Continue Reading the Full article here