CategoryCrowdsourcing

OpenSource Gold: The greatest Crowdsourcing story ever told

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Crowdsourcing is a funny term, and people often ask me what does crowdsourcing have to do with technology, to which I reply–EVERYTHING! Without the vast internet and communications made possible by it, crowdsourcing would be a fools dream. Right now, I work in an environment so virtual that the first time I met my project manager face to face was last week at a conference, a full 6 months...

Instagram Camera: Coolest thing EVER!!

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A couple of weeks back, I wrote about a cool card game based on Computer processes, in hindsight the only thing that post proved was that I’m a geek. The card game was funded through a crowdfunded initiative, and that was really what made it cool. The instagram camera is cool on its own, and the fact that it’s currently  being crowdsourced through Indiegogo (a website similar to...

Confirmed: Crowdsourced reviews are better than Professional critics

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A study by the Harvard Business School published in april 2012 via it’s online portal HBS Working Knowledge, confirms that “Expert ratings are correlated with Amazon ratings, suggesting that experts and consumers tend to agree in aggregate about the quality of a book. However, there are systematic differences between these sets of reviews.” In layman terms that just means that...

Crowdsourcing Taxi Reviews

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One of the stark differences between Malaysia and Singapore (besides the remarkably better food in Malaysia) are the Taxi Drivers. I used to frequently go to Singapore for business trips and for just about everywhere I went, I chose the taxi, either a friend would help book a comfort cab via their iPhone app, or I’d just call the hotline to book one. I’ve never once been turned down...

The UK crowdsourced Auditing for MPs : Malaysia Boleh?

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One thing is true of all governments, the most reliable records are Tax records. That is one of the coolest quotes from a very cool movie (which is saying a lot). In V for Vendetta, the heroes try to piece together a puzzle by visiting the tax records to locate some missing information, in real-life we’re also faced with the same problem. No matter how corrupt or bureaucratic you think the...

Igor Presnyakov succeeds in getting kickstart-ed

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Now some say he lives in Amsterdam and lives only on cheese,that may be fiction but damnit this guy is the best guitarist I’ve seen. Check out Igor’s rendition of Canon from the youtube embed above and you’ll know what I’m talking about, or just head on over to youtube and check out the countless songs he’s played on youtube including sweet child of mine or someone...

Using the crowd to predict the future

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I just finished Crowdsourcing by Jeff Howe, the definitive book on crowdsourcing, and although it was written nearly 4 years ago, I was really bowled over by key insights throughout the book. Crowdsourcing is more than just the design work or iStockphoto, there’s also an offshoot into the world of Crowd-predicting. Utilizing the wisdom of the crowds to predict anything from sports results...

Can we use crowdsourcing for Autistic people?

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Yesterday, a doctor by the name of Sandra posted a comment on my blog about how she thought crowdsourcing could help disabled people particularly those with bipolar disorders get jobs online. If anyone in the crowd can contribute to a crowdsourcing initiative then even those with bipolar disorders should be able to do it, and they should be paid the same amount. It got me thinking about an...

How much do you trust Google?

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I basically live on Google servers, the first sites I visit when I wake up are Google Mail and Google Reader, without these two sites I’m basically lost. I seldom log on to facebook anymore and twitter may keep me occupied for about an hour, but after that I need my fix of Google. Google is such an integral part of our lives, in fact since 70% of my readers come here via a Google search...

Why ReCaptcha works: The 4 requirements of Crowdsourcing

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If the 5 of you can’t decide where to eat lunch without saying the dreaded words “up to you”, how in world can 100,000 or even 1 million people combine together to solve a problem? The answer is through a mixture of the right collaborative systems enabled by the right technology and people with the right skill-sets motivated by the right things. Get all 4 components right, and...