Re-Captcha (No Time Wasted ) and Books

Re-Captcha (No Time Wasted) and Books

I saw an episode on Nova Science Now in which one segment was on Luis von Ahn. He is a Computer Science Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He is one of the people who came up with Captcha. This is the spam stopping application that you see at the end of emails, comments, etc. where you must enter the words or numbers that you see. It is used to differentiate between a human responder and a computer.

But, the really cool part is the Re-Captcha. Professor von Ahn realized that the process of entering the word would use of a small amount of time, essentially a wasted 10 seconds, when people enter the word. At the same time, the Professor was working on the project to put old books and some newspapers onto the web. But, there were numerous words that the computers couldn’t recognize when the pages are scanned, print that has different shapes, etc.

The Brilliant Solution:

Add a second word to the captcha; a word that the computers can’t recognize when the old books are scanned. So, when you type in the word, you make it so the computer can now recognize it. You take the strangely shaped word and type it in, in lettering the computer recognizes. Now, you have given the computer an association between this strangely shaped word and the ”normal” lettering the computer can “understand.” This association is then used when the old books are being scanned onto the computer. WOW!

Imagine what we could do if we all worked together!

For More Information:

PBS Science Now: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/0401/04.html

Article http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-9989480-93.html#addcomm

-Glenn