Recently while doing an image search for pictures of french toast I noticed a link in the top corner that said New! Google Image Labeler. I thought this sounded interesting so I gave it a click.

I was surprised for two reasons:

1. Google had apparently acquired this fun image labeling game I had once played 2 or 3 years ago.
2. I had just mentioned this game to my brother 2 days ago when he was talking about a collective consciousness experiment. Talk about collective consciousness!

The game goes like this:

First you are paired up with an online partner who also wants to play. Next you are shown an image and asked to label it. There is a list of off-limits labels that you are not allowed to use. The goal here is to type the same label as your partner so that you can move on to the next image. In the process you end up typing many different labels per image in hopes of typing a match. You are also able to pass on hard to label images.

You have a 2 minute time limit and score points each time you and your partner match labels. The points earn you nothing but bragging rights, and perhaps a spot in the top scorers area.

At the end of the game you are able to see a list of the words your partner used to describe each of the images. It’s very interesting to see how differently someone can see the same image.

Every once in a while you’ll get paired with someone who amazingly seems to think the exact same way you do, and that’s when it really gets fun.

The brilliant thing about the Google Image Labeler is that Google has created a quite fun game, that is actually getting work done on the back end. You see, Google uses the matched labels as possible labels for those particular images in their image search. Thus they are actually creating a more accurate human labeled image search under the guise of a “game”.

To me this falls along the same line of genius as the self checkout lines at grocery stores. People complaining about checkers being too slow? Let’s let them do it themselves and at the same time, be able to hire less checkers. Win Win! (Lose for people wanting checker jobs)

I expect we’ll see more innovations like this in the coming years. Perhaps a “flip the burger” game at McDonalds or a “help Mr. Drain chug the old oil” game at Jiffy Lube. If these games are fun like the Google Image Labeler, you’ll soon be dry cleaning your own clothes without even realizing it!

I guess this is *kind of* a web app so I’ll put it in the Web App Review section.

I just discovered a site that lets you Rickroll someone by phone. Joy!

Here’s the link

I was soo tempted to Rickroll that link but you my faithful readers mean more to me than a simple joke.

Basically you enter in your friend or enemy’s phone number and go. The calls I have done usually take around 15 minutes to go through. If you want priority processing you can buy a token (45 cents on paypal) that will push your call in front of the free calls. There is also a monthly membership that makes the call look like it is coming from your number (rather than unlisted)

For the free calls you are limited to one call per half hour. Still that is a lot of freakin’ Rickrolls man!!!!

They also have Chocolate Rain and Numa Numa so you can officially make the friends you still have hate you like everyone else does.

If you haven’t seen the video “Twitter in Plain English” yet check it out:

http://www.commoncraft.com/Twitter

What I really want to post here though is how cool I think Common Craft is. This is one of those “why didn’t I think of that?” sites for me. First of all it’s a two person husband and wife team which is super neat. Second of all it’s a totally unique and straight-forward substitute to boring manuals or documentation. You can scream “RTFM” at the top of your lungs but the fact is no one reads. No one even reads good books these days so how can you expect them to read about your boring site or app documentation? However watching a 2 minute video on how to use your site or app is much easier, more fun and gets the job done better imo.

Obviously these videos are simple explanations and wouldn’t work as well for something like say… Photoshop or another complicated program. However I’m pretty impressed with Common Craft’s work. My favorite is when they use fishing line to animate things like emails being sent. Classic low tech goodness!

Oh and this is just genius:

http://www.commoncraft.com/zombies

I was looking through old blog posts and realized something horrible. Something completely sickening. Something all but irreparable.

I had never blogged Evernote.

I thought for sure I was mistaken, but no it is true. I have never blogged Evernote. My favorite new app in the whole world.

Now in my defense, it is in beta and you have to request an account and wait for them to respond. That said, they responded within a day or two for me. Also I still have spare invites so email me at jesse AT frogblade.com if you want an invite.

There, I have rambled on for 3+ paragraphs without telling you what Evernote even is.

Basically it’s a web, mobile and desktop RIA that lets you keep notes that are then stored online and accessible anywhere. Sounds simple right? It is. Yet so powerful. For example. Your working on some code at home. Didn’t you just figure this out at work? Yes - but dang - it’s at work. Ahhhh you saved it as a note in Evernote. Problem solved!

You’re working on a report, project, novel, conference session, love letter, resignation notice etc. and you have an idea about it while at the library. Evernote it and you can access it later at home when you are finalizing the content.

You get the idea.

Evernote is searchable and can even accept html so you can paste content right from a web site without losing the formatting.

One of the wow factors Evernote boasts is the ability to read text off of image files. In other words, you could take photos of business cards on your phone, chuck the card and upload the photo to Evernote. Then you can run a search for “Lyle” and Evernote actually includes the image text in its search! There’s Lyle’s business card! The accuracy is pretty impressive as long as the text is clear and somewhat legible.

There. I blogged Evernote.

Want to watch a cool video?
http://www.evernote.com/about/what_is_en/tour/