migs

In Europe and the United States, unemployment rates that do not improve are typically given more attention than ever before (other than what Kate Middleton is wearing, of course). Aside from the depressing jobless figures, new trends may be altering labour markets and the economy as a whole. Crowdsourcing was a popular term in 2011, … Read more

A large amount of self-assurance might be harmful. The optimism that greeted the Facebook IPO has evaporated, as Mark Zuckerberg reflects on Facebook’s share price and industry experts scramble to explain its issues. So, how did everything go so horribly wrong? The crowdsourced prediction site FacebookIPODayClosingPrice.com may provide one clue. The idea for the site … Read more

If you’ve ever had a close encounter with a lamppost, you’ll know that the eye can sometimes be tricked. After all, considering how complicated the eye is, you may think it would fail us more frequently. You may recall from your high school biology classes that light enters the eye through the pupil and is … Read more

Forget about climate change, zombie apocalypses, Mayan prophecies, and asteroid calamities. All of this is ridiculous. What you should be concerned about is a possible moon Nazi incursion. The aliens are lurking behind the moon, preparing to return to Earth and finish their mission of world conquest. According to the narrative of Iron Sky, a … Read more

What comes to mind when you hear the term “think tank”? Is it possible for a group of passionate advocates to conduct an effective and successful campaign without the involvement of Google, Facebook, or social media in general? What if we let a group of overly educated experts with no experience in the real world … Read more

I watched this TED talk by Luis von Ahn a while ago in order to avoid doing some work. while his name may not be familiar to everyone, his accomplishments will: he developed reCAPTCHA, a service that uses human beings to help digitize The New York Times’ and Google’s library archives. (It’s worth noting that … Read more

Microtask has won Red Herring’s Global 100 prize for 2011. We’ve now joined the ranks of firms like Google, Skype, Baidu, Salesforce.com, YouTube, eBay, and many other companies that have won this award and gone on to change how we live and work. It’s good karma to be nominated.

Last week, Google shocked cartographers when it announced plans to charge for the use of the Google Maps API. The cost of loading one thousand maps will be about $4 next year, according to the Wall Street Journal. So, is this the “final destination” for the dozens (maybe hundreds) of crowdsourced mapping projects that rely … Read more

Mia Ridge, a culture heritage technologist at Monyo, is an advocate for crowd-sourced museum gaming. Mia has worked as a developer for several world-class museums and is now doing her PhD in cultural heritage through crowdsourcing. In a highly competitive market, it is crucial for your project to stand out from the crowd. Games are … Read more

Everyone has a bad experience with mass transit, just as everyone has a terrible experience when going on a first date or being interviewed at work. Anything to do with the subway in London, including waiting for an hour at a station during rush hour; buying candy on the way home from work just because … Read more